2018 - 2019 Blues (Hockey) Season

[JCShutout]

Only counts as one though. Come out hard on Tuesday, keep the foot on the gas and win the series.

[GeddyWrox]

Yeah, no let up. Play it like you did in Game 6 vs WPG!

[Jocephus]

[Popeye_Card]

Big gamble for the Sharks to skate Karlsson. Ended up burning them. As good as he is offensively, you can’t afford an ounce of hesitation skating defensively in the playoffs. Then after they lost another Dman they were skating 4 most of the rest of the afternoon. That really drags on a team.

Mostly it was good to see the Blues play well playing their game this series. They’ve been fortunate to be 2-2 coming into today, but they deserved this win. Fantastic game. Keep the foot on the throttle.

[albertmvpujols]

Big gamble for the Sharks to skate Karlsson. Ended up burning them. As good as he is offensively, you can’t afford an ounce of hesitation skating defensively in the playoffs. Then after they lost another Dman they were skating 4 most of the rest of the afternoon. That really drags on a team.

If DeBoer was intent on playing Karlsson he should've scrapped Haley and dressed a 7th defenseman. That was really odd to put all of their eggs in the basket assuming that Karlsson was going to be fine to go the whole game especially when DeBoer doesn't really play/trust his 6D (Ryan) all that much based on his usage in previous games. I didn't see another defenseman go down in this one, but the Sharks were down at least 4 players (Karlsson, Doonskoi, Pavelski, Hertl) by the end of the game. I'm not sure how major those injuries were or if they were just pulled out as precaution in a blowout loss.

Mostly it was good to see the Blues play well playing their game this series. They’ve been fortunate to be 2-2 coming into today, but they deserved this win. Fantastic game. Keep the foot on the throttle.

It really amazes me how much teams get ground down as series go on, but the Blues just keep playing their game. It's now happened all three series. The Jets were dead in game 6, the Stars in games 6/7, and the Sharks in game 5.

The Blues have really done a great job limiting turnovers (after game 1) and making the Sharks push the puck 200 ft earning any progress in any zone. The Blues then capitalize off of turnovers in the Sharks/neutral zones and if the Sharks get it deep the Blues defensemen have done a great job getting it out and resetting making them push through the neutral zone and into the offensive zone again.

[Popeye_Card]

My bad, I was thinking it was Dillon that got the puck in the face at the beginning of the third.

[AWvsCBsteeeerike3]

Awesome game, it was nice not having to sweat it out in the 3rd for a change.

First period was pretty even; blues were a bit lucky to have the lead at the end of it. But, from the start of the 2nd period going forward that was just sheer domination. Hope they can continue that and close it out in StL.

Tank taking that penalty shot was a thing of beauty. I know a lot of guys can make it look easy, but man, he made that look really easy.

[Popeye_Card]

Tank taking that penalty shot was a thing of beauty. I know a lot of guys can make it look easy, but man, he made that look really easy.

They broke it down on NHL Network this morning. Jones played it terribly--came out of the goal, then instead of pacing back as normal he just stood there frozen. Tank did a great job sniping the top corner glove side, but the whole blocker side of the goal was open too. He had his choice of shots he could take.

Shooters should shoot and dekers should deke. I guess Jones thought he would just react to whatever shot Tarasenko decided to take knowing that he likely wouldn't try to deke, but he left way too many holes open.

[Jocephus]

[TheoSqua]

This is the closest the Blues have been to a cup in 49 years. Crazy.

What is especially odd to me is that this is the type of grind-them-down defensive style hockey the Blues have played for the last 6-7 years. Except this season the opponents are actually being ground down from it. So i've been trying to figure out - what is different? The difference really seems to be Depth and Binnington.

- Depth. This is the deepest Blues team we've had in a really long time. Compare this team to the last game of the 2016 playoffs (by ice time).
Here are the forwards with the least minutes played in that 2016 game:
4th Line:
Scottie Upshalle
Dmitrij Jaskin
Kyle Brodziak

3rd Line:
Patrik Berglund
Robby Fabbri
Jori Lehtera


Now compare that to the 6 least played forwards last night:
4th line:
Sammy Blais
Robert Thomas
Alex Steen

3rd Line:
Jaden Schwartz
Baryden Schenn
Pat Maroon

The team's current 4th line is heads and shoulders better than the 2016 team's 3rd line. Let along the 4th.

If you looks down center O'Reilly/Schenn/Bozak/Thomas is considerably deeper than Stastny/Lehtera/Berglund/Brodziak.

This does a couple of things. First it means no one player has to play well in order to win. The Blues have had 18 (Eighteen!) different players score a goal in this playoffs. So a line like O'Reilly's line can focus on playing shut-down hockey while not needing to do the lions share of scoring as well. In 2016 the team relied on the same lines to shut down the opponents and score goals as well. That's just not feasable against deep teams like the Sharks or Penguins of 2016.

Second, it has the opposite effect on the other team. The Sharks can't put their top shutdown line against the Blue's top line without allowing the Blues 3rd an 4th lines to dominate possession. The team just has too much talent for it to last over seven games.

Going back to the centers, if I had to rank them in talent and ability for a playoff run i'd probablt do it like this:
O'Reilly (2019)
Stastny (2016)
Schenn (2019)
Bozak (2019)
Thomas (2019)
Berglund (2016)
Brodziak (2016)
Lehtera (2016)

And you could make the argument that Stastny is too high on that list, but there is no question that the rest of the 2016 team is on the bottom. Putting that depth into perspective is crazy to me.