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The Blues completed a very strong road trip on Tuesday, defeating the Colorado Avalanche 4-2. Jake Allen was the perhaps the only reason the Blues were in the game during the first half of the game. Allen was very strong, keeping it 0-1 before his team could regroup and find some focus and pull away for the 4-2 victory. It wasn’t a clean or pretty game by the Blues but at the end of the day the team got the two points it needed.
Magnus Paajarvi scored a good deflection goal, Jaden Schwartz scored for the first time in over a month and Patrik Berglund scored two goals, including a nice empty net goal. The game wasn’t without cost which included the Blues losing Paul Stastny to an injury.
Tonight, the Blues begin a three game home stand against the Vancouver Canucks. The Canucks have the 4th worst points percentage in the league and are 3-5-2 in their last 10 games and 11-21-3 on the road this season. The Canucks are 3-1 in their last four road games and defeated the Blackhawks in overtime on Tuesday after almost giving the game away to the Hawks in the third period.
The Canucks season only looks marginally better than the Avalanche. For example, at least the Canucks do have one 20 goals scorer (Bo Horvat) but they still don’t have a single player averaging more than 2/3 of a point per game. I doubt anyone in Blues nation can name who leads the Canucks’ defensemen in scoring. It’s Troy Stecher who has 22 points in 62 games. The Blues have three defensemen, if you include Shattenkirk’s statistics as a Blues this season, who have almost 50% or more points than Stecher.
Goaltenders Ryan Miller and Jacob Markstrom have both posted save percentages of at least 91% so the troubles really can’t be blamed in large part on goaltending. The Canucks main issue has been scoring where they rank 2nd worst, trailing only the Avalanche. They don’t generate many shots, tied for league worst in shots per game. Their power play has been dismal, 3rd worst in the league. Their penalty kill hasn’t been much better, 4th worst in the league.
It sounds like Ryan Miller will get the start.
The information surrounding Stastny seems a bit odd to me. Quotes from the team suggest that Stastny was held out from coming back into Tuesday night’s game because of an injury not related to Tarasenko’s shot but that he is missing tonight’s game because of the injury related to Tarasenko’s shot. Regardless, Stastny is reported to be out week to week. With him out and Lehtera still unavailable, expect the lines to look like this:
Schwartz – Steen – Tarasenko
Sanford – Berglund - Perron
Paajarvi – Barbashev – Yakupov
Upshall – Brodziak – Reaves
Bouwmeester – Pietrangelo
Edmundson - Parayko
Gunnarsson – Bortuzzo
Allen
It’s a great day for hockey.
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