Follow @stlgoalie The Blues will be in New York tonight, starting a quick two day, two game NY/NJ road trip when they face the Rangers. The Rangers have lost two in a row, eight of their last ten, and five of their last six home games. On the year, they are 17-13-8 at home.
The Rangers give up the 6th most goals per game, partially due to having the 4th worst penalty kill and giving up the 4th most shots per game. Their offense isn’t much better, scoring at the 8th worst rate while generating the 5th fewest shots.
The Rangers are led by Mika Zibanejad who has 70 points in 73 games. After Zibanejad, the pace falls a lot with Chris Kreider second at 55 points in 73 games. Tony DeAngelo leads the defense with 29 points in 56 games. Wait? Former Blue Kevin Shattenkirk doesn’t lead their defense? Shattenkirk only has 27 points in 67 games. I’m guessing Ranger fans are pretty disappointed with that production given Shattenkirk still has two more years under contract at a $6.65 million AAV.
Zibanejad has been good against the Blues with 11 points in 10 games. Kreider has as well with 12 points in 10 games but he has a lower body injury and hasn’t played in 10 days.
**UPDATE** - It appears Kreider will suit up tonight.
Henrik Lundqvist and Alexandar Georgiev have almost identical statistics, both with a 90.7% goals against average and Lundqvist besting Georgiev in goals against by 0.04. Lundqvist is 5-6-0 against the Blues with a 92.9% save percentage. Georgiev has only faced the Blues once, losing and only stopping 87.9% of the shots he faced.
None of the Blues have enjoyed much career success against the Rangers. Given that Jake Allen has been fantastic against the Devils, going 6-0-0 with a 95.2% save percentage and atrocious against the Rangers going 1-3-0 with an 84.6% save percentage, I feel it is pretty safe to expect Jordan Binnington to start tonight and Allen the start tomorrow. Also, Binnington’s start against the Devils was one of his few sub 90% nights.
I don’t expect the lineup to change. It should start like this: Schenn-O'Reilly-Tarasenko Maroon-Bozak-Thomas Schwartz-Sundqvist-Perron Sanford-Barbashev-Steen Dunn-Pietrangelo Bouwmeester-Parayko Gunnarsson-Bortuzzo Binnington
With a Blues point tonight, the Blues would clinch a playoff berth. With a win tonight and Predators loss to the Penguins, the Blues would leapfrog Nashville and move into second place.
NHL Champions for Charity We’ve gotten some traction on the charity wager among the Central Division bloggers. One charity I’ll highlight is Meagan’s Walk http://meaganswalk.com from your Blackhawk’s Blogger Justin Lowe. Meagan’s Walk seeks to bring hope and awareness to cancerous brain tumors, the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in children and young people.
It’s a great day for hockey.