St Louis Blues

Blues host the Coyotes and a hometown prospect in his first game
March 27, 2017, 3:06 PM ET [7 Comments]
Jason Millen
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The Blues and especially Jake Allen fell to some bad luck on Saturday night, losing 3-2 with less than 3 seconds left in overtime. All three Flames goals went off Blues players before going into the net with one going off Jay Bouwmeester’s skate, another off his stick and the overtime winner going in off Kyle Brodziak’s skate. Allen really only had a chance on the first goal that went off Bouwmeester’s stick. He had little, if any, chance on the other two.

Some Blues fans might be frustrated with the officiating Saturday but unfortunately the inconsistencies shown by the officials on Saturday night are not new. Some nights more of the inconsistency is to your benefit, other nights it is not. I wonder how much a play early in the contest had to do with influencing the tilt in the calls. Early in the game, Patrik Berglund was dumped in the offensive zone without a call. Berglund seemed to linger on the ice for a while even though he wasn’t severely injured. He also seemd to be staring down the referee and I wonder if any words were exchanged. I made a comment at the game at the time that his behavior might have been interpreted as showing up the referee and that it might not exactly help them get any calls the rest of the way. Regardless, the Blues played well enough to give themselves a chance to win but just fell a bit short.

Tonight, the Blues will play the first game of a home and home with the 2nd worst team in the league, the Arizona Coyotes, a team they beat 3-0 a little more than a week ago. The Coyotes have lost two games in a row and five of their last six.

I would expect the Blues to come back with the same lineup tonight which should look like this:
Schwartz – Steen – Tarasenko
Sanford – Berglund - Perron
Paajarvi – Barbashev – Yakupov
Upshall – Brodziak – Reaves
Bouwmeester – Pietrangelo
Edmundson - Parayko
Gunnarsson – Bortuzzo
Allen

The Blues expect to face Swansea, IL product Clayton Keller in his first NHL game tonight. Keller just completed a wildly successful Freshman campaign at Boston University with 21 goals and 45 points in just 31 games. He was drafted 7th overall by the Coyotes in 2016.

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 t