It has been a hell of a series so far between the Blues and hawsks. Even though the series is tied 2-2 I cant help but be somewhat down about the way the series has gone thus far (blowing a 2-0 series lead, our captain getting injured on a cheap hit, us loosing game 3 even though we outplayed the hawks). I still really like our chances of winning the series, I’m just starting to have the normal “doubts” creep into my head, any Blues fan knows what I’m talking about. It has been our MO to play well during the regular season, and then “find a way to loose” in the playoffs as far back and I can remember. I have thought long and hard about this, and I think the historically poor playoff performance can be tied back to the way we structure out teams.
Our teams are always built around “4 productive lines” contributing and chipping in to win games. This works really well in the regular season for a lot of reasons. The biggest of these reasons is probably that injuries do not effect your team as much if you are rolling 4 lines and have everyone on the team “pulling on the rope”. In the playoffs however, during crunch time with the game on the line your bench shortens and your team is effectively reduced to 6 forwards, 4 defensemen & 1 goalie. With that in mind lets look at the the Blues top 10 players and compare how we stack up:
Blues
Backes (out)
Steen
Sobotka
Oshie
Tarasenko
Schwartz
Pietrangelo
Bouwmeester
Shattenkirk
Jackman (or polak)
The question you have to ask yourself is can that group win a game in crunch time. Anyone who follows the game would tell you that is an excellent group of players, but can they win with the game on the line…… I personally think this is one of the best “core” groups we have ever had. If Backes is out for any extended period of time it REALLY hurts our chances. Its possible Ott, or Morrow could step up short term and fill some of the void he leaves but its not sustainable to rely on them for a long period of time to do that…. Looking forward to game 5 Friday night, and hopefully the Blues go up 3-2.