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The Blues continued their winning streak at home on Thursday, extending it to seven games by besting the Canucks 4-3. While the Blues were fortunate to win, based on the statistics and box score, it appears this game may have been more like the games under Ken Hitchcock. The Blues were dominated in corsi (60 to 40) and in expected goals for by almost half a goal (a lot as this represents 30% more). Of course, in the past, perhaps they would have lost a game like this rather than pulling out a narrow victory.
Given that Wade Megan had the 2nd worst 5v5 Corsi on the team and playing under 10 minutes, it wasn’t surprising to see him get sent back to Chicago with Kyle Brodziak coming off injured reserve.
The rest of the Wolves call ups continue to do well with Magnus Paajarvi and Ivan Barbashev contributed with a goal and an assist, respectively. Kenny Agostino was plus 1 with 2 shots in just under 12 minutes.
In my opinion, the officiating crew and NHL should be a bit embarrassed that none of the officials on the ice heard either the Blues bench or Jake Allen when Allen’s mask strap had come off. Their interpretation of rule 9.6 of Section 3 was simply incorrect. The rule states “When a goalkeeper has lost his helmet and/or face mask and his team has control of the puck, the play shall be stopped immediately to allow the goalkeeper the opportunity to regain his helmet and/or face mask. When the opposing team has control of the puck, play shall only be stopped if there is no immediate and impending scoring opportunity. This stoppage of play must be made by the Referee.” Clearly, the mask was off during a time when there was no immediate or impending scoring opportunity. Even if the referee didn’t see the mask off until the puck was in the Blues defensive zone, it should have been clear the mask was off prior to them entering the zone. It appears their interpretation was like some of the non-goal calls. While we understand the puck was likely and perhaps had to be across the goal line, because we couldn’t actually see that it was with 100% certainty, we can’t call it a goal. Only this scenario is worse as it risks significant player injury. The Blues, Allen and the NHL were lucky that the shot hit Allen in the chest and not the face.
The Blues traveled to Buffalo yesterday before taking on the Sabres today at noon. The Sabres are 2-2-2 in their last 6 home games and 14-10-4 on the season. The Sabres have been a little better in their last 10, going 5-4-1.
The Sabres do have the league’s best power play but also have allow the most shots per game in the league and have the 2nd worst penalty kill.
Jack Eichel is only 7 points behind team leader Kyle Okposo even though he has played 20 games less. Evander Kane leads the Sabres in goals with 19. Rasmus Ristolainen anchors their defensive core and has 34 points, good for 9th among all defensemen.
Everyone has been talking about Patrik Berglund being on fire but people seem to be ignoring that Alexander Steen has also really picked up his scoring, putting in 9 goals in the month and a half of 2017 while only scoring three in the two and a half months of 2016. Of course 25% of Steen’s goals this season have been empty net goals.
With Kyle Brodziak back and no practice today, I’m guessing the lines might look like this:
Steen – Lehtera – Tarasenko
Schwartz – Berglund – Perron
Agostino – Barbarshev – Paajarvi
Upshall – Brodziak – Reaves
Bouwmeester – Pietrangelo
Gunnarsson – Shattenkirk
Edmundson – Parayko
Allen
Jammer’s NHL Nuggets
1) From Mark Lazerus – teams coming off their bye week in February are 0-5-1 including the Hurricanes losing to the Avs who were on a 4-23-1 crawl.
2) Mike Yeo’s 7-1 start is the best of any coach in Blues history.
3) The penalty kill is 21 for 21 since Yeo took over.
4) In the 2 months the Blues GAA is under 2.25, they won 71%. The other months, they won 46% of the games gave up at least 3 goals per game. For the Blues, defense matters.
5) Under Yeo, the Blues are scoring 0.43 more goals per game but allowing 1.74 less per game.
6) The Blues have a +18 goal differential in February
7) Even with the improved play, Allen is only 30th in save percentage among goalies with 25 games.
8) The young goalie I really wanted is 6th with a 92% save percentage – John Gibson.
9) Matthews, Laine, and Atkinson have the same number of goals as Tarasenko and more than Ovechkin. Wonder what Vegas would have paid for that bet before the season started.
It’s a great day for hockey.
Fellow Hockeybuzz bloggers
Nashville Predator's Paul McCann,
Winnipeg Jet's Peter Tessier and
Minnesota Wild's Dan Wallace have generously agreed to a friendly charity wager. We were hoping to do the whole division but don't have it fully represented yet. The blogger whose team finishes the highest the standings at the end of the year gets to pick a charity to whom the others donate in their name.
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