St Louis heads into round 1 against CPHL's best

[CaptainCrunch]

St Louis Times Picayuune (AP)

When GM CaptainCrunch was hired at the start of last year by the Blues, he vowed that the organizations goals were competitiveness and the Playoffs. In terms of meeting those goals it could be deemed a failure. While St Louis got more competitive they fell short and missed the playoffs.

This year Crunch was more muted in his promises, "Yes" he said in a preseason press conference, "We very much want to make the playoffs and adjust our team, not rebuild it". So this year, its mission accomplished. St Louis sneaks into the very last playoff spot with a 40-35-7 record and a +2 goals for/against differential. The problem is that the last month of the season has been wildly inconsistent with the Blue's closing out their season with a 5-5-0 record in their last 10 games. Not a good enough record to strike fear into anyone.


The worse news, the Blue's take on the leagues best regular season team, the Nashville Predators who finished the season with 112 points on the back of a 50-20-12 record and a +50 GF/GA record.

While legends are made in the playoffs, and everyone has a favorite hockey story around upsets. This might be a matchup where the Blue's will be badly exposed and quickly eliminated by the Predators.

The Blue's go into the playoffs with a interesting lineup to say the least, as Crunch worked to shore up their forward depth and improve the teams play away from the puck. As such its expected that the line combinations will look like this.

Couture (75) Stephenson (72) Duclair (73)
Hall (74) Granlund (72) Kessel (72)
Archibald (68) Tierny (69) Sissons (69)
Schwartz (71) Cizikas (68) Jamkrok (71)

The top line is going to have to bear the burden in terms of generating offense. Combined they accounted for 80 of the Blue's 238 glaos. The second line should provide some offense spark with the addition of Granlund though Hall has been really inconsistent this year, and Kessel has been extremely hot and cold.

The Archibald Tierny Sissons unit will be a nice to add offense line, but they're mainly there as a checking line with strong penalty killing. Its hoped that the 4th line can find some kind of chemistry.

Carlo (72) Zadorov (72)
Fowler (71) Jensen (70)
Brodie (70) Matheson (70)

The Blue line has undergone some changes with the introduction of Carlo and Zadorov who can be hard to play against physically and can add some offense. The rest of the blueline needs to rely on smart quick outlet passes and generating points from the errr points.

Goal though has been an adventure for the Flames, Koskinen has been ok in his 6 starts with a .912 svpct and a gaa average of 2.50. If it falls to Khudobin its bad news for the Blues as he still hasn't found his game.

On paper this series is a massive mismatch. in their head to head series against the Preds, the Blue's lost 2 games in regulation, and 2 games in the shootout while winning 1 game in overtime. They only scored 11 goals in 5 games while allowing 16.

The prospect of facing a team that can roll out Ovechkin, Bergeron and Rust on the first line is daunting. If the Blue's have an advantage its on the blueline, because after Shea Weber, its fairly ordinary. But that doesn't matter when you have former Blue Marc-Andre Fleury in net.

Just in terms of mismatches.

Offense - Nashville 2nd in the CPHL, St Louis 18th
Defense - Nashville 5th St Louis 13th
PP - Nashville 23 St Louis 19th
PK - Nashville 3rd St Louis 26th

In this reporters humble opinion there are very few advantages for the Blues.

Up front the Blue's have more upper end talent especially with Ovie and Rust and Bergeron. The Blue's might have an edge in the bottom 6. I could argue that the Blue's top to bottom have a deeper blueline, but Weber is a true number 1, and its not close at all in goal.

The Blue's are a massive underdog. But as Pandora found when she opened up the box and released evil on the world, or this case on the Blues, there is always hope. Its just not much.

The Blue's will be lucky to take this series past the 4 game minimum, and maybe they can hold onto the massive underdog, world doesn't believe us mentality to squeek something out.

But its unlikely.

Instead its more likely that this goes to script. The top end talent for the Pred's can't be denied, I'm taking the Pred's in 5 games though, just based on me feeling bad for this Blue's team. But its not going to be close . . . it can't be . . . it won't be . . . will it?