The Second Round Of The Playoffs Opens Tonight. Hey Buddy... We're HERE!

(Shout out to Quigs @BigSeanQ)

Hey Buddy… WE’RE HERE! Its Game 1 of the Western Conference Semi Finals in beautiful St. Louis, Missouri and goddamn am I ready for this thing to start. The adrenaline rush of playoff hockey is extremely stressful but also addicting. The time in between rounds.

Blues lines stay the same as they ended in the Winnipeg series, with Perron up with O’Reilly and Schenn slotted with Sundqvist. Fabbri will stay in after his strong play on the 4th line in Game 6.

The Stars stay relatively the same as well, with Fedun in for Oleksiak on D.

This is going to be a battle of depth and top heavy skill. The Dallas forward group are no slouches, but they have paled in comparison to that first line this year. The more physical the Blues can be with these guys, the better, as a team that relies on their top guys SO heavily can’t afford them to not be at 100%. The same goes for Heiskanen, Klingberg, and Lindell. They are skilled and mobile guys who want to make creative plays. The more the Blues can wear them down on the forecheck the better. They rely so heavily on big minutes for their top guys that the longer the series goes on, the taxing nature of that type of hockey will hopefully weigh on them after a hard fought 6 games with Nashville.

These 9:30 EST start times are ridiculous for a game going on in the Central time zone. So fricken late! The Blues luckily have a lot of experience from last round playing a ton of these games and I think that will help tonight, at least I hope so because 3 of the first 5 games are in the late slot.

LETS GO BLUES!!!!