St Louis Blues

Blues look to shoot down the Ducks while locking down a playoff spot
March 15, 2017, 4:04 PM ET [5 Comments]
Jason Millen
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The streaky Blues increased their winning streak to five games, riding Jake Allen’s 38 saves en route to a 3-1 victory of the Kings. The victory increased the Blues lead over the Kings to 4 points with a game in hand and kept the Blues in striking distance of the Predators. If the Blues win their game in hand with the Predators, they will jump into third place in the division and out of a wild card playoff spot.

Allen was especially strong in the 2nd period, stopping all 21 Kings shots. Once again, the Blues gave up part of the lead late in the game, giving up a goal with under 3 minutes left to bring the Kings within one goal before Alexander Steen scored his 4th empty net goal of the season.

The Blues didn’t leave LA unscathed as Dmitrij Jaskin left the game with a lower body injury and will be out at least a week.

The road won’t get any easier for the Blues as they head to Anaheim to take on the Ducks tonight. The Ducks have won 5 of their last 6 home games and are a very strong 22-8-3 at home this season. A large part of their success at home is a result of having the 4th best home save percentage

The game will be a rematch of the Blues 4-3 win in St. Louis less than a week ago where Joel Edmundson scored the game winning goal due to an offensive rush by Robert Bortuzzo with less than 30 seconds remaining in the game.

The Ducks are in a hotly contested playoff position race. They currently sit in 3rd place, losing the tie breaker to the Flames but are only 1 point ahead of the Oilers. They are coming off an impressive 5-2 win over the Capitals.

While the Ducks power play has been average, their penalty kill is ranked 4th in the league. They sit 8th in goals against per game but have struggled to score, ranking 20th in goals per game.

Relatively speaking, much like Alexander Steen, Corey Perry and Ryan Getzlaf have been struggling to score. Both Steen and Perry have 14 goals while Getzlaf has 13. Rickard Rakell leads the ducks with 29 goals in 58 games. Cam Fowler is driving the offense from the blue line with 11 goals and 33 points in 69 games.

Both John Gibson and Jonathan Bernier have been strong in goal, posting 92.1% and 91.1% save percentages, respectively. Bernier has been getting the bulk of the starts lately, partially due to strong play and partially due to Gibson injury.

It appears Jake Allen will get the start in net and Nail Yakupov will replace Jaskin.

Expect the lines to start out like this tonight:
Schwartz – Stastny – Tarasenko
Steen – Berglund - Perron
Paajarvi – Barbashev – Yakupov
Upshall – Brodziak – Reaves
Bouwmeester – Pietrangelo
Edmundson - Parayko
Gunnarsson – Bortuzzo
Allen

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.