****The Official St. Louis Blues are my favorite hockey team thread****
 

The 2021-22 St. Louis Blues (and my favorite NHL team) make franchise history!!! 5-0!!!

"Vladimir Tarasenko scored two goals and Ville Husso recorded his second career shutout as the St. Louis Blues remained undefeated in five games with a 2-0 victory Monday night over the Los Angeles Kings.

The Blues are off to a 5-0 start for the first time in franchise history. The Kings haven't won since their season opener.

It was Tarasenko's first multi-goal game since Feb. 14, 2019. Husso stopped 34 shots in making his first start of the season between the pipes. The Finnish goalie, in his second season, improved to 2-1 against Kings.

Kings goalie Jonathan Quick had 32 saves in falling to 12-16-3 lifetime against St. Louis."

The rest of the story here:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nhl...cid=uxbndlbing

The St. Louis Blues are off to great start, going 5-0 to lead the Central Division after defeating the LA Kings tonight, for the second time in three days. Setting another franchise record, the Blues have scored 25 goals in just 5 games, and lead the NHL in GF/G.

The Blues play CO next in three days.

LET'S. GO. BLUES.

They should move to KC

They gave us something to watch other than that shit show in NOLA.

For that I am grateful.

LGB!

Thought you might appreciate, a good buddy of mine posted on social earlier.

He and his family have been stalwarts, MoF, back in the day we had to detour their wedding proceedings so they could get pictures in tux and gown on the ice at a game.

Currently the best sports team is Missouri. Not even close. I love the Blues. They're taking the sting out of this mini Greatest Show on Turf collapse. (Except the Rams started 0-6 and had more HOF players on it's roster. Brutal.)

An official Cards thread and now this???
F everything St. Louis (except our valued members who just happen to live there).

So Joel Hofer....not great.

Has given up a couple goals tonight by just having real shitty technique. By all accounts he's a talented kid but he's clearly not ready.

Let's go Blues! Shut the door.

3 points in the first 2 games of the Cali trip.

Those are always difficult ones and with the Blues having some COVID headaches to deal with, you'll take it.

Damn weird game tonight but hey - win's a win.

LET'S GO BLUES!!!

Love beating the Sharks. And doing it in fairly convincing fashion is icing on the cake.

The Blues are legit.

I don't think he's ready yet, but 2 of the 3 goals were in part due to major **** ups by the Blues or a deflection.

The 1st goal from Burns was the only one I think that can be attributed to technique(he was in position, but the puck went under his pad).

2nd goal was a breakaway short handed goal by Couture with Kyrou making a terrible pass leading to Faulk mishandling the puck before Couture scored 5 hole.

3rd goal the puck was deflected by a Shark player.

Overall, I thought he was fine given the circumstances. Nothing to be concerned about.

The 1st and 3rd goals were both technique.

The 3rd was REALLY bad. He barely had to slide left to right and in so doing his pads went WIDE open. That's an easy save if he maintains his technique and just keeps his blocker down.

It's exactly the sort of technique goal I'm talking about. Yes, it's impossible to have adjusted to that deflection on the fly, but that's why technique is so important. Keep the stick down, keep the pads tighter on your slide step and that's an easy save.

It's what always frustrates me so much about the Blues broadcast on some of those goals. "Oh well X had no chance on that save..."

Well no, not if he opens his 5-hole up when he moves 18 inches to his right, he doesn't. That's why you're not supposed to do that. Proper technique makes that a routine save.

Without RoR and without Schenn most of the night.

Saad looks damn good and Neal's been a sneaky good pickup. Reminds me a little of Morrow that season we got him for cheap and he had a few drops of gas left in the tank.

With Tarasenko playing at a high level and guys like Walman giving you credible efforts, this is a damn good team. It still lacks the high-end punch that teams like Colorado can throw at you, but it's awfully deep. It can roll 3 dangerous lines and a 4th that isn't completely punchless. That makes you a really dangerous road team because the home team can't use having 2nd change to neutralize your top line.

So if you can stay out of the penalty box and force some offensive zone draws, you're going to get yourself in a lot of nice matchup situations where your 2nd line (and often even your 1st) is playing a less defensively capable line because they've just been used against another semi-dangerous line.

That depth helps a lot and not just when you get your 3rd line against their 3rd line. It helps you occasionally get your 1st line against their 3rd line.

I still think that would have been a hard save to begin with given that he was screened and it was deflected. We can agree to disagree. But we are aligned with thinking the first goal was poor technique.


I'd rather play Neighbours and have him learn on the 4th line than play an ancient Neal who has no future with the team and is just a body.

Walman/Mikkola are both JAGs and I'd love to see the Blues upgrade over them by acquiring a 3rd pair LD (if they don't get a top 4) or playing Santini.

I'd love to keep Tarasenko, but trading him makes the team better in the future by getting a top 4, though it probably doesn't help to trade him this season.

This team shows a lot of promise if they can play a consistent two way game. I'm not concerned about scoring(the Blues have 4 very good lines they can roll), but the defense could get exposed unless it tightens up a bit.

I don't like Krug paired with Faulk given that I don't believe their style of play compliments each other well. Krug needs basically a better right handed equivalent of Scandella to let him take liberties on offense while lightening his pressure on defense. Same can apply with Faulk and a left handed partner, though I think Faulk can shoulder the load more on defense better than Krug.

I also would like to see Husso show he can be a consistently good backup to lighten Binnington's load. In an ideal world, Binnington plays ~50 games and Husso plays ~30 so Binnington doesn't get warn down. I trust and believe Binnington is an above average and good starting goalie. Can't say I feel that way about Husso backing up yet.

Agree 100%.

Also, maybe it's my imagination, but I really think this team has more talent offensively than they did last season. Saad is definitely heating up, as is Tarasenko, and i think Kyrou and Neighbors are trending in the right direction. This could be a deep playoff team if they can stay healthy.

:(

In honor of Chief becoming the 7th person in NHL history to play 1000 games and then win 200 as a coach - the greatest speech ever. A whopping 12 seconds...for the rest of their lives.

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SC hype videos:

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**** that was fun, man. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go tear a phonebook in half. Once I find a phonebook.

The St. Louis Blues are the greatest and only good thing to come out of St. Louis in the history of ever

The NHL has been crushed by COVID. They sure are pussies for tough guys.

Gonna be a shit show of freezing cold up in the Twin Cities

This thread is right up there with a WNBA thread. Idiotic and worthless.

Yeah - because it's the players that are shutting things down and not the fact that the sport has 1/4 of its teams in Canada where they're still crazier than shithouse rats about COVID.

Guess you don't need access to it then.

This is the sort of thing that prevents me from having Mod powers.

I'd do this shit a couple times/day.

Its because of the Canadians.

And within 3 minutes I get a PM that I'm a power hungry jerk, because he's apparently closely monitoring this worthless idiotic thread.

Tuckdaddy is a worthless ****

Did you jerk off to it?

Because I'd have jerked off to it.

Right answer! :D

Red dawg making friends wherever he posts. ROFL

PBJPBJPBJ
Bye, piss-boy!!! Happy New Year!!!

Blues vs. Wild tonight. Haven't seen a Blues game in a month or more. Can't wait!!!

Well, they're from St. Louis. Can there be anything good about them?

-8 degrees in MINN. Yikes.

1!

Went to a Chiefs game in 2008 that with wind chill was -12. I can only imagine how cold it is in Minnesota right now.

All of you are pussies. I was outside in a sweatshirt for 10 minutes.

I dont watch hockey, but this is real hockey.

today, just down the street

https://scontent.ffcm1-1.fna.fbcdn.n...sQ&oe=61D63DAD

i live in PHX now. Yes, I'm a pussy now when it comes to cold weather. It's probably over 40 now, and i won't go outside without a fleece. And wool socks.

cold is a state of mind

with that said-I sweat a lot when it is 50.
40 is shorts weather

I have bottles of water on the porch. They are frozen

Yep, it's 46, and I needed a jacket.

Just decided I'm not going fishing in the morning (temp predicted to be 41 on the river). Instead, I think I'll do up some chimichurri marinade tacos and smoked chicken wings for the game.

We do want to winter in AZ when we retire. I can take the heat. But need that dry heat. So many reasons I will not be in Florida.

I have a WC of -20 at school.

The weather man said they had to warm the ice to 20F. It was the most smooth at that temp

Just remember, there's no dealing with it when it goes over 125 degrees. it doesn't matter that it's dry; it sucks great big donkey balls no matter how you try to ignore it.

This may as well be the Winter Classic thread.


GO BLUES!!!

2!!

it is too cold to snow

When it warms up later this week, it will snow again

I love that they're warning the ice!!!!


3!!!!!

Blues are definitely playing their "road game." Funny thing is, MIN looks like they are as well.

Dem Seattle Krakens are my favorite NHL team.

That was coffee?

Jordan Kyrou man among boys tonight

tonight it is really the ice box

Really nice play by MIN. Blues fell asleep a little there.

Welp, we got us a game again.

LET'SGOBLUES

Yikes

That was great. Love this outdoor shit.

It’s weird seeing Hockey on TNT

Quality win... Now let's see how many of them (both teams) suffer frost bite... LMAO

I mean you think about total body temp and hands/feet, but I didn't think about faces/ears until I saw them putting lotion on that guys earlobes because they were just bright red and cracking.

It's not hard to keep your core temp up a bit when you're working as hard as those guys were, but there's just not much you can do about noses and ears apart from putting a gator or something under your helmet, then you you may not get the ventilation you want on the top of your head when you're out there busting ass during a shift.

In either event - damn nice effort by the boys. And while I wish Kyrou had about a 6 year deal right now, he'll still only be an RFA at the expiration of his current deal so it's probably safe to go get that jersey...

The St. Louis Blues are +300 vs. the Avs for the series. Also dead last at +1800 in Vegas of all still extant playoff teams to win the Cup.

We got 'em right where we want 'em, boys . . .

I'm Loving the anticipation of this series with the Avs. The Blues are playing at a really high level right now and Binnington looks a lot more like 2019 Binnington. If the Blues can make McKinnon's line struggle even just for a few games the Blues have a real chance at stealing this series.

Yah, I know the Avs have a lot of horses, and they do. But their defense isn't that much better than the Blues'. And we seem to have an advantage on the power play. And we have the most 20-goal scorers (8) of any team in the NHL this season. And I think the defense has gotten better over the last 3 games. I think that the Blues are going to give the Avs a real fight, and with our scorer depth, could even take it away from CO.

Which is why I put $300 on the Blues to win this series against the Avs and another $300 to win the whole damned thing.


LETS GO BLUES

House money.

This is a team that's better equipped to give Colorado a run than anyone still standing, IMO.

But they're still likely to get their asses kicked. The Avalanche are ****ing nasty and this sure feels like their year.

Jesus ****.

The Avalanche are insanely good. The Blues didn’t even play poorly and they’re lucky they’re not losing 6-1 right now.

When Colorado plays to their ability, they won’t lose. Ever. Just…wow.

Honestly, had the Blues stolen this game you could've convinced me they'd win in 5.

Not as any sort of statement as to the quality of the teams, but I simply don't think Colorado can play a better game than that. It was damn clinic. And to play your best game, at home, and still lose (and lose home-ice advantage in the process) would be a brutal blow to your psyche.

You could see them coming into game 2 a bit rattled at that point, especially if Binner makes a couple of early saves, and suddenly get tight.

Again, that was awe-inspiring.

I would seriously hope not... any Cup contending team isn't going to be rattled to that extent and just fall apart. And if they did, they're ****ing soft and weren't going anywhere anyway.

A team like Vegas last season outskated them and jumped on every mistake, putting more and more pressure on them... it's what they do.

The Blues were outskated by a fair amount last night, which doesn't really lend itself to the Avalanche changing up their strategy and putting every stupid shot on net because they never have a second in their own zone, leading to bad shots and stupidity (as they did against Vegas).

A Blues win would have had to light a fire under their ass to put a ton more pressure on the puck, to force the Avalanche to fall apart... Bennington isn't going to do that by himself.

Yeah, the forecheck has to be world's better for STL to stay in this.

Once the Avalanche hit the neutral zone, you can't skate with them. You can't just 'be physical' when they're advancing because you can't hit what you can't catch.

Like you said, you've gotta get them in their own zone, shrink the room they have to operate and then stay physical on the puck. You're NOT gonna hang with these guys if they break out and they have too many D-men who can hit an outlet pass to let them have it clean (even that POS bust Erik Johnson).

The Blues are going to have to get away from their 11-7 forward/Defense alignment. You just can't send 11 forwards out there and expect them to be able to maintain the level of forecheck St. Louis will have to have.

But again - any game St. Louis wins will be mostly 'stolen'. The Avalanche are just better. This year and next are perfect storms for them. It's their time.

Yeah, whatever throws them off their game, which has typical been end to end pressure and a relentless forecheck, and then aggressively using those turnovers for odd man rushes.

O'Reilly in particular is pretty smart about it... of course that's how he got his goal and he had some good pressure, including surprising MacKinnon at the blue line in the 3rd, which almost turned into a good chance.

The Preds' big adjustments seemed to be simply being more tenacious than their game 1 effort, plus their shot blocking improved and they started a super spread out PP in games 3 and 4 that got the Avalanche chasing some, which turned their PP from "can we decline these penalties" to something respectable.

And yeah, it would be a ****ing shame if the Avalanche don't win it this year or next. A buddy texted me last night during the 2nd intermission and said the Avalanche needed another goal and might regret letting them hang around... and I replied, uh, there's no "letting". I mean, we can talk all day about how they whiffed on a couple chances and hit some posts, but that's just hockey. They played as well as you can ever ask for and sometimes hockey is just a fickle bitch.

And over the course of a ~2-4 year window, you have so much shit going against you... the field, then injuries, potentially the refs and how games are called, etc. Its not like looking back on the entirety of Aaron Rodgers' career and thinking... hmmm, something must be wrong.... over the course of a few postseasons in the NHL, you need to be pretty damn good (check) AND have some things go your way. And even then, your chances are improved to probably like 20% or maybe 55/45 over any given opponent.

Blues accomplished what i think al Blues fans hoped for: stole one in CO to start the series. Now it's a race to three.

Was a little flukey tonight; Avs made a lot of uncharacteristic errors (how about that crazy moment when two of them skated right into each and turned it over?). Don't expect that to be an issue in the next game.

Was a bit surprised that the Blues won the chaos portion of the game. I figured that any wild unscripted incidents would favor the faster, more talented Avs. Feel like STL got a little lucky there.

But I loved the way the Blues came right back in this game and played much better team defense, tried to punch CO in the mouth from the get-go, but didn't lose control and take a bunch of penalties.

Good job, boys.

Yeah, the end of it was a bit mind boggling... skating into each other in their defensive zone and were all out of whack with the empty net. It looked like there were 8 Blues skaters against 4 Avalanche, they were so discombobulated.

Goes back to what I said a few posts ago... the reality is game 1 could have looked much worse for the Blues and game 2 could have been worse for the Avalanche. And if they get so rattled by it they have a hard time stepping up in St Louis, they're STILL not the team people expect them to be.

The Avalanche seem to have a thing for game 1s in the past couple postseasons, hitting an unworldly gear and then coming back down to earth as teams adjust.... so now it's their turn.

The Blues may not be as talented as the Avs but I think they might have the mental edge in this series. They're the underdog and have less to lose. Avs can't get past the second round in recent years. They have to be thinking "here we go again."

Shit, I certainly hope not... they would have to be pretty naive and full of themselves to think it would be a cakewalk, and terribly weak mentally to take one loss and bad night as the sky is falling in a 1-1 series, as opposed to simply putting it behind them and focusing on game 3.

So I'm starting to feel like Berube is a lot better tactical coach than I realized.

I mean breaking up their best line to try to jump start stuff is something you see fairly often but it takes balls to do that in the playoffs. We know Berube has balls.

But Buchnevich running the point even with an 11-7 alignment? That was creative as hell and it worked. And what REALLY impressed me was that he did the exact opposite of what I expected and it completely wrong-footed Colorado. I figured they'd go hard on the forecheck and try to keep the puck hemmed in. He went with what I figured was essentially suicide - he all but GAVE Colorado their blue line. The old school neutral zone trap was NOT something I saw coming. Yet there it was. Repeatedly. Even some left wing lock shit thrown in to boot.

I think Colorado was completely unprepared for it and you could see they were off their game because of it all night. They just couldn't figure out how to get through the middle and all that traffic.

Ultimately I bet playing with the lead as often as they did made a difference there and we'll see if the Blues can/will keep that up, but man it was DAMN smart and a wrinkle I just wouldn't have expected from someone I've never really thought of us being really creative out there.

They'll adjust and I suspect you'll see Colorado try to dump and chase a bit earlier. But here's the thing, dump and chase against St. Louis is REALLY hard with Binnington in net. The guy's just such an aggressive puck-handler that if you do that, he's going to kick the puck out. Maybe you just keep doing it and wait for him to mishandle one. And if the Blues stay with that, they'll have a pretty hard time scoring while also making it easier for Makar to get aggressive on the offensive zone.

But if the Blues can get another early lead, I bet they go right back to it because they can really keep Colorado bottled up at even strength with that approach and Binnington being aggressive with the puck.

I certainly credit Berube for the win last night. It was clear from how much the Avs were staring at their iPads that the Blues were throwing things at them they weren't expecting.

The question is now whether Bednar is up to the task to fix it.

Watched the first 2 periods last night - got home from Louisiana yesterday and I was falling asleep on the couch by 9 pm. It was a struggle to stay awake as late as i did. Blues were a completely different team from game 1. I was a little surprised they were as flat as they were in game one. Not moving their feet, second to every loose puck, giving them so much freedom in the neutral zone etc. etc.

Will be interesting to see the adjustments the Avs make for game three and see if the Blues are ready for those changes. This series, I could see it being similar to the SCF against Boston. Hopefully we have the same outcome this year as that year.

It was one of the few times I've seen a talented team still look talented (they weren't playing flat or anything) but simply look confused.

The whole game the Avalanche still looked dangerous. Every now and again one of them would manage to just blow into the offensive zone and you knew they still had their legs under them.

They just couldn't figure out what to do with that trap. And Makar, for the first time I've EVER seen, looked a little confused. I think that's part of what had him less aggressive in the offensive zone.

If the upcoming game were a road game, I'd like to see the Blues come out thundering and try to attack the offensive zone to quiet the crowd. But being a home game, I think I'm pretty content with them bringing that same gameplan into game 3 and then hoping to steal a lead on the power play or something. Turn this into a grind where you can largely neutralize Colorado's talent advantage.

Then when it gets back to Colorado you consider turning up the offensive pressure early to see if you can catch the 'lanche flat-footed.

Think Binnie is done. Sucks. But he's actually playing unbelievably inconsistently, and now he's actually trying to hurt guys. Need to sit him down and look for a new net-minder.

Shit.