NHL Hockey Betting: Stanley Cup Playoffs for May 25, 2016
One game on Wednesday as the St. Louis Blues try to stay alive and the San Jose Sharks try to advance to the Stanley Cup Finals:
ST. LOUIS BLUES AT SAN JOSE SHARKS:
The St. Louis Blues are down 3-2 to the San Jose Sharks. This is the third time they’ve been behind in a playoff series this year and they’ve won the other two. That being said, I sure don’t feel good about their chances of making it 3-0. The Blues are a maddening team. They’ve got plenty of talent but they have the focus and discipline of Dennis the Menace. But let’s review what they’ve done so far. They had arguably the toughest road to the conference final of any team in the NHL. But they beat the defending Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks and the regular season Western Conference champion Dallas Stars. Making it even more impressive they went to seven games in both and gritted out victories with their season on the line. The conventional wisdom is that a team needs ‘character’ and ‘intensity’ to win a Game Seven and particularly on the road. Yet the St. Louis Blues did just that in the Dallas series.
The same St. Louis Blues have at various times looked distracted, undisciplined, completely unfocused and just downright bored with the process of playing hockey deep in the playoffs. They’ve also lacked energy and have played sloppy. They’ve got the ‘mental game’ of a minor league team in January, not a Stanley Cup contender in May. Don’t forget that there are at least two men who share some responsibility–head coach Ken Hitchcock and captain David Backes. Hitchcock is supposed to understand the psyche of his team and how to get them motivated. He looks as clueless as anyone else. Hitchcock has been reduced to spouting out sports cliches when asked why his talented team is such a mess:
“Our expectations are high and we want to do well for the fans. Sometimes that cocktail doesn’t mix very well. I mean, if we could have eliminated the errors. There was a tremendous amount of effort today, but we did make big errors and they came back and haunted us.”
What does this mean? The game I watched saw the Blues and Sharks tied heading into the third period before St. Louis gave up three goals in the final twenty minutes on their home ice. Sure, two were empty net goals but still ugly. The Blues got only 21 shots on goal. Jake Allen gave up four goals on 21 shots. The St. Louis penalty kill gave up two goals on three power plays. Maybe Hitchcock has reached his ‘glass ceiling’ as a coach. I know he’s been around forever but he’s looked absolutely dumbfounded throughout this series.
More Hitchcock. He was asked about the disappearance of Vladimir Tarasenko. During the season Tarasenko ranked up there with Alex Ovechkin and Connor McDavid as one of the most dangerous offensive players in the NHL. At times he was unstoppable as he piled up 40 goals and 74 points. For the playoffs he has a respectable 7 goals and 6 assists but he hasn’t scored a point in five games. And by the way that’s the entire length of this series so far. It’s gotten so bad that Canadian media outlets are doing the old ‘missing persons’ gag–Tarasenko on a milk carton and so forth. Some media outlets are speculating that St. Louis will ship Tarasenko elsewhere. Here’s Hitchcock defending Tarasenko’s performance. Nothing wrong with that–in this regard Hitchcock *is* doing his job. But this doesn’t explain anything:
“He’s struggled this series. He hasn’t gotten the looks that he normally gets. But he’s one shift away from breaking it open.”
Sure, he hasn’t sold anything this month but he can feel it coming! All he needs are the Glengarry leads!
Now about David Backes. Backes is one of the most solid guys in the league off the ice. He’s as good of a dude as you’ll find in sports. But he’s not holding up his responsibilities as captain. He’s acting like everyone else–clueless, unfocused and lethargic. It’s his responsibility to keep the mood in ‘the room’ positive and be an example of intensity, desire and hard work. He looks like he’d rather be somewhere else. Maybe that’s one of the Blues’ problems–there might be a ‘C’ on Backes’ sweater but St. Louis doesn’t have the leadership a captain provides. By contrast, take Connor McDavid. Edmonton went without a captain this year, no doubt anticipating that they’d be putting the ‘C’ on #97 sooner rather than later. But even though he would have likely been named captain anyway he went out there and earned it. He was a rookie and made some mistakes and Edmonton had some big holes on defense and in many ways was a complete mess. McDavid is blessed with downright ungodly talent. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a rookie with such skill and pure, raw ability. Of course being a captain is more than talent–and on just about every shift you could watch Connor McDavid and you could tell that he loves playing hockey. It even rubbed off on Taylor Hall, who for the past couple of years was a huge underachiever. He became an offensive force and an All Star last season.
Right now winning a Stanley Cup is probably the only thing that can save Hitchcock’s job. Backes may be gone too. I hate to wish that on him because he’s one of the biggest ‘character guys’ in a sport full of them off the ice. But the Blues need more of that character on the ice.
All of this notwithstanding–I’m going to take St. Louis in Game Six. For whatever reason, they’ve played their best this postseason when they were up against it. They’ve done well after blowout losses and defensive meltdowns. San Jose is a mediocre home team. But most importantly, I’m getting a good price in what has been a fairly even series through five games.
BET ST. LOUIS BLUES +150 OVER SAN JOSE SHARKS