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The Blues dropped their Sunday morning game 4-1 to the defending Stanley Cup champion Penguins. The differences in the game were bad defensive turnovers by Alex Pietrangelo and Vince Dunn, a poor play by Brayden Schenn along the wall and Jake Allen getting outperformed by Matt Murray.
Kyle Brodziak opened the scoring in the second period with a workman like goal after setting up a glorious chance for Chris Thorburn. Plays like this are exactly why some fans and likely the coaching staff really appreciate what Brodziak brings to the rink every night. Watch it
here.
As has been far too often the case this year, the Penguins evened up the score almost immediately. Less than 30 seconds later, the Penguins win an offensive zone faceoff. Pietrangelo does a good job forcing the Penguin player to the wall and dislodging the puck from him. Schenn has position on Crosby and gets to the puck but weakly pushes the puck behind the net where Connor Sheary resides. Sheary gives the puck back to Crosby who scores form a bad angle through the whole in Jake Allen’s stance.
While I appreciate Allen’s comments after the game that Crosby is “the best player in the world”, it concerns me a bit that Allen claims he wouldn’t “play that any differently”. Notice the openings in his stance illustrated here.
The stance allows the puck to be shot off his torso and potentially through the opening above his leg pad and into the net. If you look closely here, does it look like the puck is resting on the top of his pad right before Crosby slashes his pad, knocking the puck off and into the net?
For skilled players like Crosby, I’m not sure this is the save strategy I would use on a play of this type.
On the 2nd and 3rd Penguins goals, Both Alex Pietrangelo and Vince Dunn’s giveaways appeared to be the result of both players being too nonchalant in their own end with Dunn gifting the puck to Bryan Rust on a weak passing attempt and Pietrangelo getting his pocket picked by Dominik Simon behind the net.
Along the way, Matt Murray made a number of good stops including a strong glove save on Vladimir Tarasenko and the Blues of course had a goal from Paul Stastny called back due to a high stick. At the end, Crosby added an empty net goal. Overall, the game was pretty evenly matched with a few mistakes and better goaltending costing the Blues.
The challenge gets tougher tonight as the Blues are in Nashville to take on the Western Conference leading (best point percentage, not total points) Predators. The Predators have only lost once in regulation in their last 10 games and have earned points in 6 straight games. They are 7-1-1 in their last 9 home games and 18-5-3 at home overall.
The key to the Predators’ success has been their stingy defense which ranks 3rd in the league in goals against average, one spot better than the Blues. Their power play ranks 5th in the league while their penalty kill is tied for 7th.
The Predators have 3 defensemen in the top 39 in the NHL in points with PK Subban (4th), Roman Josi (19th), and Mattias Ekholm (39th) yet they don’t have one forward in the top 75 though Filip Forsberg would likely be there if not for injuries earlier in the year. Forsberg has 38 points in 40 games.
Speaking of Forsberg, he is a notorious Blues killer, with 9 goals and 20 points in 18 games. Ryan Johansen has 15 points in 22 games against the Blues.
The Blues will be looking to avenge two losses in November and December. Both games were effectively one goal losses once you adjust for an empty net goal. Blues goalies only gave up 3 goals combined in those two games but the offense could only muster one lone goal.
Carter Hutton will get the call in net tonight for the Blues. He played the November game, stopping 26 of 27 shots.
Tage Thompson is still unavailable due to injury and while Zach Sanford is getting much closer to playing, tonight won’t be his night. For the Blues, I’m guessing the lines will start like these:
Forwards
Alexander Steen - Paul Stastny – Vladimir Tarasenko
Jaden Schwartz - Brayden Schenn – Patrik Berglund
Ivan Barbashev - Vladimir Sobotka – Dmitrij Jaskin
Scottie Upshall – Kyle Brodziak – Chris Thorburn
Defense
Carl Gunnarsson - Alex Pietrangelo
Jay Bouwmeester - Colton Parayko
Robert Bortuzzo -Vince Dunn
Goalie
Carter Hutton
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 will donate in their name.
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