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The Blues look to complete a near perfect road trip tonight in Colorado when they take on the last place Avalanche at 8pm. The only blemish to date on the road trip was a 2-1 loss in Anaheim. Some might argue that the trip would be a success even with a loss tonight given that the Blues already have gotten 6 points and that they beat the Kings. I would suggest that anything less than at least a point tonight would be considered a great disappointment. With the Kings loss last night to the Flames, a win tonight would extend the Blues lead to 8 points over the Kings with only 10 games to play.
The Avalanche currently hold the NHL’s worst record, something I would expect them to clinch by the end of the week. Even still, the Avalanche have been playing better hockey as of late, going 3-1 in their last four home games, only losing to the Senators. The Avalanche held a 3-1 lead in Chicago midway through the 3rd period on Sunday before they gave up five unanswered goals including a goal on a controversial non-offside call.
As one might expect, the Avalanche have the lowest goals for per game, the highest goals allowed per game, allow the 6th most shots per game, and generate the fewest shots per game. Their power play ranks last and their penalty kill 6th worst.
The Avalanche’s leading scorer is Matt Duchene with 17 goals. Nathan McKinnon leads the team in points with 45 in 71 games. Tyson Barrie has added 33 points in 63 games from the blue line.
The Blues hope to repeat their shutout of the Avalanche a little over two weeks ago where they got power play goals from Paul Stastny and Patrik Berglund and another goal from Scottie Upshall while Jake Allen pitched the shutout. Expect Allen to get the start tonight given the schedule as his 91.6% save percentage against the Avalanche.
Ever since Yeo put the Blues on notice with his claim that he was going to make sure that the coaching staff “put guys in the position and if they’re not doing the job, then we find other people that will”, the team has gone 7-1.
With things rolling, don’t expect the lines to change. They should look like this:
Schwartz – Stastny – Tarasenko
Steen – Berglund - Perron
Sanford – Barbashev – Paajarvi
Upshall – Brodziak – Reaves
Bouwmeester – Pietrangelo
Edmundson - Parayko
Gunnarsson – Bortuzzo
Allen
Blues Notes
- The Blues have two short-handed goals this year, both coming in the last 5 minutes of the game with one being an empty net goal.
- It took them 59 games to get their first short-handed goal.
- The Blues turnaround has been D oriented – Goals against dropped from 3.62 in January to 1.83 in February to 1.56 in March.
- Goals for dropped from 2.85 in January to 2.67 in February and March.
- Under Mike Yeo, the Blues are allowing less goals in all games – down from 1.79 in wins to 1.14 and down from 4.35 in losses to 2.86.
- The Blues have given up the same number of goals to defensemen as their defensemen have scored (30) >80% given up were at even strength while less than 50% scored were.
- Scottie Upshall is your 2nd leading Blues scorer in March with 3 goals.
- Crazy Tarasenko stat - 6 goals in each of November, December, January, February, and March. He had 4 in October which was a partial month which would pro-rate to 6.
- Schwartz on the other hand goes 7, 4, 1, 1, 0, and 1 in the same months.
- Only Bobrovsky has a better March save percentage than Allen (min 2 games)
Since February 20th, goalies with the highest score and venue adjusted Corsica Adjusted FSv% (difference between expected and actual save percentage) are as follows – Fleury, Bobrovsky, Jones, Bernier, Quick, Lack, Domginue, Price, Elliott, Allen and Hutton (minimum 3 games). Allen is even better in March, trailing only Fleury, Bernier, Bobrovsky and Quick (minimum 3 games).
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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