NHL Hockey Betting: Stanley Cup Playoffs for May 11, 2016
One game on Wednesday’s card but it’s a tasty Game 7 between the Dallas Stars and St. Louis Blues:
ST. LOUIS BLUES AT DALLAS STARS:
The St. Louis Blues missed a great opportunity to end this series on home ice in Game Six. Now they’ll have to play Game Seven on the Stars’ home ice in Dallas. The Blues may have played their worst period of the season in the first period of Game Six and goaltender Brian Elliott definitely played his worst period of the playoffs.
Elliott’s bad period combined with some good work by Jake Allen in relief have–ironically–set up something of a ‘goaltending controversy’ in St. Louis. It’s been Dallas with the goaltending questions throughout the playoffs but now Blues’ head coach Ken Hitchcock is the one trying to figure out who should be between the pipes for the decisive Game Seven. There’s a good case to be made for both Elliott and Allen. Elliott has been the rock in the Blues’ net ever since the stretch run of the regular season and has likely earned another chance to redeem himself for his bad performance. The problem is that he’s been so good that St. Louis may have overworked him. A couple of times during this series and all throughout the Chicago series he’s come up big when the Blues’ defense hasn’t. He gave the team a chance to win Game One with 40 saves on 42 shots but the St. Louis offense could muster only one goal against Dallas and Lehtonen. It’s important to keep in mind that Elliott has never been a ‘workhorse’ type of goalie like Braden Holtby or Pekka Rinne. He may be worn down by the pressure and several months of playing every game.
Allen, meanwhile, is untested in this playoffs but rested. He shut the Stars out through two periods on Monday but that sounds better than it really was–his teammates were playing like rabid wolverines in the last two periods of the game and held Dallas to just 7 shots in the second and third period. There’s a pretty compelling case against throwing a goalie that hasn’t seen much action into the net for Game Seven just because Elliott had a bad twenty minutes of hockey last time out. The entire team was lousy in the first period of Game Six so it seems unfair to pin the blame on Elliott–even with his ugly 3 goals on 7 shots line–in light of the fact that there’s plenty of blame to go around. Blues center Patrik Berglund summarized the Game Six fiasco very well:
“We weren’t ready to play, somehow. We were sloppy and obviously they took it at us. Tonight, it was too late to come back.
“Very disappointing. It’s also something we have to forget now.”
Ken Hitchcock will announce the St. Louis Game Seven goalie on Wednesday afternoon. The locker room was reportedly very supportive of Elliott and my gut instinct suggests that he’ll get the start in Game Seven. Interestingly, the entire St. Louis franchise might have some goaltending decisions to make very soon. St. Louis has a ton of goaltending depth in the organization and if not this year (since Elliott and Allen are signed through 2017) than certainly next year they’ll have to figure out what to do with all of their young netminders. They just signed 2014 top draft pick Ville Husso to a three year, entry level deal. They’ve already got Pheonix Copley, Jordan Binnington and Anders Nilsson in the organization.
Of course, Dallas coach Lindy Ruff will have a ‘short leash’ on his goalies for Game Seven. He’s expected to start Kari Lehtonen who was very strong in the Game Six win. Lehtonen stopped 35 of 37 St. Louis shots after his teammates gave him a 3-0 lead and essentially took the rest of the night off. He held off the Blues’ onslaught in the second and third periods to preserve a 3-2 win for his team. Although he’ll get the Game Seven start it won’t take much for Lindy to bring out the hook.
The other big question mark concerning Dallas’ personnel is really not a question–no Tyler Seguin in Game Seven. Seguin has recently started skating again after his ill advised premature comeback from an Achilles Tendon injury in Game Two of the Minnesota series. Seguin is skating harder at practice but apparently nowhere near a return.
Obviously, the home team has historically had the edge in Game Seven but so far this season there’s been one home team win in seven games (St. Louis over Chicago) and one road team (Nashville over Anaheim). The ‘eye test’ suggests that St. Louis is still the better team despite their maddening first period disappearance in Game Six. They’ve got two goalies that could start in most NHL cities. They’ve got the better defense, are more tactically sound and more physical. They’ve also got Game Seven experience–they came up big in the First Round eliminating the defending Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks in seven games. They were put into a position where they had to show some mental toughness facing a team with a ridiculous amount of postseason experience and did exactly that.
Bottom line–St. Louis is unlikely to lay an egg two games in a row. Ditto for Brian Elliott should he get the start. Then again, the Blues did disappear for a stretch in Game Seven of the Chicago series allowing the Blackhawks to take 14 straight shots between the late first and early second period. Elliott bailed them out with the only goal allowed being a deflection off of Jay Bouwmeester by Andrew Shaw. Of course, St. Louis was coming off a bad performance in Game Six during their first round series. They had a chance to eliminate the Blackhawks in Chicago, scored the first goal and led 3-1 after the first period. The Blackhawks scored five unanswered goals to win 6-3. St. Louis effectively put that game behind them then and I think they can put Game Six of this series behind them now.
BET ST. LOUIS BLUES -110 OVER DALLAS STARS