Everything Else

Let’s Kick This Pig: Blues at Hawks Preview/Street Cleaning

By 1308

get-a-brain-morans vs. Hawks Culture Club

PUCK DROP: 7pm

TV: NBCSN

GOOD GOD DON’T GO THERE: St. Louis Gametime

Projected Lineups

blues-lineup-cardblackhawks-lineup-card

Power Play (’15-’16): Hawks – 22.6% (2nd)   Blues – 21.5% (6th)

Penalty Kill (’15-’16): Hawks 80.3% (22nd)  Blues – 85.1% (3rd)

Trends: Tarasenko has 13 points in 15 regular season games against the Hawks, Allen has a .934 career SV% against the Hawks

It’s finally here, after the World Cup made an already interminable-feeling training camp feel even longer. And as the preseason has gone on I’ve felt better about the Hawks and worse about the Blues, which is actually better, because no one wants to feel good about the Blues. That probably goes for the music as well.

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Blues Q&A With Arkham Asylum Escapee Brad Lee

By 1484

Now that I’ve grown up (ha!) and given up the printed program, at least for the year, there’s only one goofball doing it and that’s Brad Lee in St. Louis. You can find his work at StLouisGametime.com and follow him on Twitter @GTBradLee.

Interesting summer for the Blues, let’s try and parse it out one at a time. Is Jay Gallon really ready to be the #1 on this team and take them farther than Elliot could? Because it seems like they’ve tried to give him the job forever and he’s never seized it with both hands. 

If he’s not ready to be the No. 1, the Blues will miss the playoffs by a wide margin. The front office can say whatever they want, but the pedigree of each goaltender was on display at every turn. Brian Elliott arrived in St. Louis signing a league-minimum, two-way contract. He was designated as the backup — if he wasn’t playing in the AHL. And then he pushed Jaroslav Halak for playing time, he won a playoff series, he got picked for the All Star Game twice. Now mixed in were some up and down seasons including one where he sat for a long time and had to go to the minors for a week to get his act together. But he did. When they had to choose between goalies, they always chose not Elliott: Halak over him, Ryan Miller over him and two playoffs ago Allen over him. And then they traded him for a second round pick. But Elliott leaves as the franchise leader in save percentage, goals-against average and shutouts. He’s fourth in wins. And all that was never enough to have the Blues forget that they drafted Allen in the second round of the 2008 draft. They remember how he was the starting goalie for Team Canada at the World Juniors. They know he was an AHL All Star. His resume is awesome. He’s been an elite goaltender at every level. So it’s easy to forget the goals he’s allowed on the faceoff because he wasn’t ready or how one goal in Game 5 against the Wild in the first round made him crumble when the Blues had the momentum. And that’s ignoring the fact that he gets injured. Frequently. Like Saturday night. But I’m sure it will all work out fine. 

Everything Else

Blues Spotlight: Hitch And Yeo… It’s Not Part Of The Martz Route Tree

By 1310

There’s a lot of weirdness about this Hitchcock farewell tour and the planned succession to Mike Yeo. It’s all very Blues, and it’ll be even more Blues in the various ways it could go totally balls-up.

First off, we know Hitch grudgingly lets his team get up and down the ice, and would rather be coaching the All-Blacks and play that version of hockey. But look at this roster. Where exactly is his beloved jam? Backes and Brouwer headed for the exit, and in came in only David Perron and the only grinding with him is the one that produces smoke coming out of his ears when trying to do any sort of math problem. Lehtera, Tarasenko, now Yakupov, Schwartz (for the five minutes he’s in one piece), Stastny, Jaskin, Robbi Fabbry or Robby Fabbri, this team has much, much more skill than GRITSANDPAPERHEARTFAAAAARRT. Is Hitch going to open up the throttle on this? Doesn’t he have to to maximize what he’s got?

Everything Else

Let’s Check In On The Neighbors

By 1396

It’s been widely agreed that the Hawks signing of Brian Campbell, especially at that price, was one of the shrewder moves of this offseason. It’s even more so when you consider how many other teams have simply lost their minds and/or torpedoed their own team in the process. The Hawks still lack some bottom six forwards–though apparently that won’t be a problem when Richard Panik tears a whole in the space-time continuum which far too many people think will happen. But what has the direct competition been up to? Let’s check on in.

St. Louis: Last year’s conquerors haven’t exactly vaulted forward from what they thought was their breakthrough. They traded their goalie, finally giving Jay Gallon the job he’s never really grabbed with both hands. They watched Troy Brouwer and David Backes walk, neither a calamitous development. So far they’ve only brought back David Perron, because they simply had to replace all the stupid they lost when Backes beat it for the Hub. They seem intent on trading Kevin Shattenkirk for reasons they can only find in their head, hoping Colton Parayko can take second pairing minutes even though Jabe O’Meester is going to disintegrate sometime in January.

Everything Else

Remembering The ’15-’16 St. Louis Blues

By 1760

Once again, we were asked to eulogize the St. Louis Blues upon their exit from the playoffs for Yahoo!’s Puck Daddy Blog. 

“Slayed the dragon!”

That’s a phrase we’ve gotten used to around these parts. Upon this day when we come to mourn/kick dirt/wildly celebrate yet another Blues playoff exit before anything a banner would be raised for, It’s time to consider that. We heard it five years ago, when another continually good-but-not-good-enough team hellbent on measuring its manhood every shift beat a deeply flawed Hawks team, took the most amount of time to do it, and celebrated as if it was discovered drinking beer gives you superpowers. A team with Cup aspirations screaming out its lungs needing every bounce and break to beat a third-placed team. It was Vancouver then. It’s St. Louis now. That’s some company you keep, Blues.

The Blues told us that triumph in the 1st round signalled that everything was different. This win proved that they’d learned their lesson. No longer was this a disgusting organization run by calculating, ham-handed, born-on-third executives with a section of their fandom doing their best to prove that evolution does not actually exist and become the scorn of the rest of the hockey world.

Oh wait, we’re supposed to be talking about the Blues and not the Hawks. Sorry, back to that.

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We Like To Watch – May 26th: #ThisTimeWillBeDifferent

By 1568

Sharks beat Blues in Game 6

It is for one team. Was it really for the other?

I suppose a trip to the conference final is different for the Blues. Winning it certainly is for the Sharks. But all the noise and concerted effort to make it clear that this was a different Blues team than before makes me wonder who were they really trying to convince? It took the Blues seven games to beat a team that basically didn’t have a blue line in the first round. It took them seven games to beat a team that certainly didn’t have a goalie in the second round. And winning is obviously better than losing to those horrifically flawed teams, and that’s what we all thought the Blues would do, but how much of a triumph these things really were is debatable.

Everything Else

We Like To Watch – May 25th: It’s The Goalies, Stupid

By 1248

Penguins-Lightning Game 6

Sometimes this hockey thing is silly and simple. Now that this series is going to a seventh game the story out of it will be how evenly it’s been played and how it could have gone either way. And on the surface, that’s true. This series could well be decided tomorrow night on a high-sticking call or another offside review or some goal that goes in off Tyler Johnson’s ass (again). By definition these are all coin-flips.

But in reality, the Penguins have spent a great majority of this series kicking the ever-loving shit out of the Lightning, but Andrei Vasilevskiy has simply held them in.

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We Like To Watch – May 19th: The Cream… Rises To The Top

By 1221

Pens-Lightning Game 3

As the Lightning learned, or should have learned last spring, you simply can’t hide their dreck of a blue line behind Hedman-Stralman forever. Hedman makes up for a lot, and sometimes can do it all on his own as we saw in Games 1-3 in last year’s Final. But that’s not a sustainable model. The Penguins have essentially steamrolled the Lightning in three games, and Tampa only has Andrei Vasilevskiy to thank for not being pretty much finished at 0-3 down right now. The past two games the Penguins are carrying a 62% Corsi-percentage. That’s borderline ridiculous.

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We Like To Watch – May 16th: The Good Fortune Of Mistakes Not Made

By 1329

If you haven’t read Ryan Lambert’s What We Learned on Puck Daddy today, you should. It’s pretty instructive on not just how luck plays a huge part in playoff success on the ice, but also off the ice. And considering how most NHL teams are run, the moves you don’t make–or more to the point the ones you aren’t allowed to– can shape an organization’s future and present. It also kind of lets you know just how backward a lot of teams still are.

And that also applies here. While everyone still rushed to praise Stan Bowman and his staff, even though they might be the most born-on-third front office in the history of the game, there are slices of good fortune in moves they weren’t allowed to complete that played a huge role for them.

Everything Else

We Like To Watch – May 12th: Scary In Its Predictability

By 1145

Stars-Blues Game 7:

We said it in September. I remember tweeting that old hockey adage, “If you think you have two goalies, you probably don’t have one.” Everyone knew where this was going with Dallas, and it never veered off that course. Everyone knew that at some point in the spring their goaltending would eventually be their downfall. They occasionally flashed that they might be the one team since the ’10 Hawks to overcome bad goaltending to win it all (same goalie too. That’s weird), and some of us bought into it at times. But it always came back to this.

The Stars were even with the Blues in the 1st period last night. They had the same quality chances. There’s didn’t go in. The Blues’ did. And that’s it. It doesn’t really need any more analysis than that.