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Saturday afternoon, the Blues finally finished off the Minnesota Wild. The Blues opened the scoring less than 8 minutes into the game when Jaden Schwartz flipped a backhand pass to
Vladimir Tarsaenko who was at the right wall, low in the circle. Jason Zucker gets lost puck watching on the play which allows Tarasenko a lane to cut to the net. Tarasenko takes advantage of a poor play by defenseman Jonas Brodin who gets caught flat footed at the side of the net. The puck goes off Brodin’s skate but Tarasenko gets it back as he blows past Brodin and shots it by Devan Dubnyk for his first goal of the series. Dubnyk likely got a bit crossed up by Brodin’s poor play as Brodin didn’t even attempt to play the body. Watch the goal
here.
A little over three minutes later, Magnus Paajarvi makes his first big impact of the game when he puts good forecheck pressure on Charlie Coyle in the right corner. Coyle slides the puck weakly up the wall as he is getting hit. Colton Parayko takes the giveaway and makes a great reversal to avoid Eric Staal and then cuts to the net. He finds Alexander Steen at the top of the left circle who rips a shot past Dubnyk. At this point, the Blues are dominating the game, out-shooting and out-chancing the Wild by a significant multiple. Watch the goal
here.
Of course, the Wild aren’t going to go away easily and rebound with a very strong last third of the first period. Their efforts are rewarded when Scottie Upshall takes a bad penalty near the Wild’s blue line. On the ensuing power play, Patrik Berglund doesn’t get much on his clearing attempt, sliding the puck to Jared Spurgeon who moves the puck to Ryan Suter at the left point. Suter beats Jake Allen with a shot that he should save. If you watch the second replay
here, notice how Allen pushes to his left, taking him off his angle and allowing the goal.
The score remained 2-1 until a little over seven minutes into the 3rd period when Paul Stastny made the most of his first playoff game. Jori Lehtera slid the puck to Paul Stastny below the goal line at the side of the net. Dubnyk made a poor play sealing off the post, leaving a triangle of open space between his skate and leg pad and his rear end. On the second try, Stastny forced the puck through the opening and into the net extending the lead to 3-1. You can watch it
here.
Nine minutes into the third period, Jay Bouwmeester took a bad holding penalty. On the power play, Nino Neiderreiter deflected a shot from the right point on which Allen made a very good save. The puck popped up in the after the save and Mikko Koivu batted into the net. Allen never had a chance.
With about five minutes left in the third period, it was Allen’s turn to give up a goal he would like to have back. Jason Zucker broke in behind the D from the left side and makes a fairly simple move by today’s standards to beat Allen. Allen went down early, putting him out of position and the game was tied.
Around halfway through the first overtime period, Vladimir Sobotka likely made all fans forget about his former contract situation when he made a Tarasenko-esque move off the wall, cutting through the right circle. Paajarvi slid into open space as Spurgeon was forced to move to Sobotka. Sobotka found Paajarvi in the slot for the quick shot and series clinching goal. Watch it
here.
Congratulation to Paajarvi who has been nothing but professional, hard working and dedicated in all of his shuttling back and forth from the AHL. I know a lot of Blues fans who are genuinely happy for him.
In game 5, the two of the three Wild’s goals were on the power play. They won the face-off battle 55% to 45% and the shot total 37 to 27 but had 6 more giveaways than the Blues. Unfortunately for the Wild, more than half of those shots were low danger shots. The Blues had three more mid danger shots and the same high danger shots. I wish the advanced statistics group would embrace this statistic as it is a lot more telling then Corsi and Fenwick but more on that later. I don’t care a lot if you have the puck but never generate any real scoring chances.
When you look at the series overall, most people are pointing to Allen’s play as the series deciding factor. He contributed to it for certain but the Wild didn’t dominate nearly as much as some people are saying. The Wild only had 7 more combined mid and high danger shots, less than 1.5 more per game. Allen’s play also wasn’t that far over his season. He sharpened up his low danger save percentage from 97.5% to 99%, his mid danger from 90.73% to 96.1% and his high danger from 81.25% to 85.7%. When you compare Allen’s play to his post 2/1 regular season, his numbers were right on par – 98.6% vs 99%, 92.1% to 96.1% (decent improvement), and 84.3% to 85.7%. Compare that to Dubnyk who lowered his low danger save percentage by 1.5% to 86.3%, increased his mid danger save percentage from 91.5% to 94.4% and kept his high danger save percentage the same at 80%.
Some Blues stats from the series
- Joel Edmundson averaged more than 22 minutes per game.
- Eight different players scored.
- Edmundson led the team with a +6.
- Tarasenko average more than 4 shots per game.
- Sobotka had a 51.3% face-off winning percentage.
- Allen had a 95.6% save percentage.
- Jason Pominville was the only Wild player with a positive +/-.
Some interesting quotes from after the game
- Paajarvi answered “No” when someone asked if any goal he has scored compares to this one.
- Yeo on Paajarvi – “I think Maggy’s a great story. He’s a guy that has to go down in the minors and the coaches did a great job with him down there and he showed an awful lot of character for him to really define his game.”
- More Yeo on Paajarvi - “He’s been a real reliable player for us and he’s come through offensively for us at big times too.”
- Bruce Boudreau – “They [Blues] weren’t the better team, but they won four games.”
Thoughts on Boudreau’s comments
His quote seems odd to me from a coach who didn’t even win 25% of the games in the series, who was tied for the worst winning percentage of any playoff team in games against playoff teams since February 1st, who had the 3rd worst winning percentage of playoff teams in games against playoff teams since March 1st, and who had the second lowest points percentage of any playoff team in games against playoff teams during both period as well. Even if you include games against non-playoff teams, the Wild were bad starting February 1st with the 2nd lowest winning percentage among playoff teams and the worst point percentage of playoff teams. Since March 1st, they also had the worst winning percentage and 2nd worst point percentage among playoff teams.
If I was a Wild fan, I think his quote might concern as would the idea that his team can “outplay” the other team so well and yet continually lose. His comment could be read as someone throwing up his hands and saying what else do you want me to do. I might wonder if he has trouble adjusting his game plan, his motivation, his message etc? In doing some coaching research this past summer, I noticed his game six record is poor as well. Bourdreau has 24% winning percentage in games 6 and 7. In games 1 through 5, his winning percentage is 56%. I might wonder if this suggests that he gets outcoached later in a series. Interestingly enough, this was only his second loss in game 5s. He had been 12-1 in game 5s.
Thoughts on the other series model picks
How is this for predictive? The teams with the highest win percentage against playoff teams since February 1st and March 1st were 6-2. The teams with the highest point percentage against playoff teams since February 1st were 7-1. When you look at overall point percentages from both dates, the teams leading those went 6-2. For the most part, Nashville and the Rangers were the only two teams that performed worse than their opponent over the last two and a half months of the regular season and still won.
When you look at the percentages against playoff opponents closer, the Rangers and Predators were still over 50% and were generally closer to their competitor’s number. In the rest of the series the differentials were higher which would suggest the Rangers and Predators wasn’t as big of an upset based on this criteria..
It’s a great day for hockey.
Fellow Hockeybuzz bloggers
Minnesota Wild's Dan Wallace agreed to a friendly charity wager. Since the Blues won, Dan will be making a donation to Dream Factory St. Louis (http://dreamfactoryincstl.org/). Dream Factory grants dreams to critically and chronically ill children from the ages of three to eighteen. They have one of the highest program expenditure ratios I have ever seen, an amazing 97% is used for actual program services. Usually, more than 3% is used for administrative and fundraising efforts but not at Dream Factory. I’m hoping Paul will take up this bet for the Predators’ series.
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