Let's Go Blues

STARS (35-27-11) at BLUES (50-16-7)

TV: TVA-21, FS-MW

Last 10: Dallas 5-4-1; St. Louis 7-2-1

Season series: The Dallas Stars and St. Louis Blues are playing for the fourth time; they'll face each other again in Dallas on April 11. The Blues won the first two games before the Stars defeated them 3-2 in overtime at Scottrade Center on March 11.

Big story: The Blues are on top of the NHL standings and battling for the Presidents' Trophy. The Stars are three points behind the Phoenix Coyotes for the second wild-card position in the Western Conference after routing the Nashville Predators 7-3 at home Friday.

Team Scope:

Stars: Dallas did a great job sharing the wealth in the victory against Nashville. Seven players had a goal and five players had multiple-point nights. It's the kind of balanced scoring the Stars will need down the stretch in order to end a playoff drought that dates to 2008.

"Obviously, us role guys want to chip in a little bit more," said checking center Vernon Fiddler, who scored the goal that made it 2-0. "It's not easy to score in this League. These are the games where we need to all chip in.

"It's nice to get some depth scoring. At the end of the day, we've got to continue to do that. The big guns need some help with that, and it takes a little bit of pressure off of them."

Blues: St. Louis wiped out the Minnesota Wild 5-1 on Thursday, with T.J. Oshie scoring three goals for the first time in his NHL career, to stay ahead of the Boston Bruins in the race for first place in the overall standings.

Coach Ken Hitchcock said it's important for a contending team to be playing well going into the playoffs, and he's going to make sure that's the case for the Blues.

"I think every player who has experience knows you have to play well and build momentum going in," he said after the win against the Wild. "You can't go into the playoffs searching for your hockey team."

Who's hot: Dallas center Tyler Seguin had an assist Friday to extend his point streak to 11 games (six goals, 12 assists). … Oshie has back-to-back three-point games and leads the Blues with 60 points.

Injury report: Stars forwards Erik Cole (upper body) and Rich Peverley (heart) are out. Peverley had a cardiac procedure last week and won't play again this season. … St. Louis defenseman Jordan Leopold (ankle) and forward Vladimir Tarasenko (hand) are out.

STLADOGG wrote:Damn, making the thread at 6 am...someones up early.

xbleed83bluex wrote:The Miller could trade end up working out really bad for us.

Halak leads the Blues in shutouts of all time. Elliot is 2nd in shutouts of all time. They both won the Vezina trophy last year. Not even Cujo, for as long as he played with the Blues, is even on the top 10 list of shutouts. But for some reason, management decided we needed someone stronger in the goalie position.

Okay, fine. Back to my point. So let's say Miller ends up playing bad for us. After all Lalime and Osgood were both good goalies, too, before we got them. We traded away Halak, someone somewhat reliable, and we will let Elliot go at the end of this season. Allen may be too inexperienced to start the number one position, so our once-strong position in goaltenders will be gone. And let's face it, Ott isn't exactly producing any more than Stewart was.

Watch Elliot go to another team, becoming the number one, and become an all-star goaltender.

xbleed83bluex wrote:The Miller could trade end up working out really bad for us.

Halak leads the Blues in shutouts of all time. Elliot is 2nd in shutouts of all time. They both won the Vezina trophy last year. Not even Cujo, for as long as he played with the Blues, is even on the top 10 list of shutouts. But for some reason, management decided we needed someone stronger in the goalie position.

Okay, fine. Back to my point. So let's say Miller ends up playing bad for us. After all Lalime and Osgood were both good goalies, too, before we got them. We traded away Halak, someone somewhat reliable, and we will let Elliot go at the end of this season. Allen may be too inexperienced to start the number one position, so our once-strong position in goaltenders will be gone. And let's face it, Ott isn't exactly producing any more than Stewart was.

Watch Elliot go to another team, becoming the number one, and become an all-star goaltender.

WaukeeBlues wrote:Okay I looked this up just because I was legitimately curious.

Since 2000-2001, the Blues have had the following players as our "Opening Day" #1 goalie...

Roman Turek
Brent Johnson
Fred Brathwaite
Chris Osgood
Patrick Lalime
Curtis Sanford
Manny Legace
Chris Mason
Jaroslav Halak

And the majority of those guys only played in the range of 35-45 games a year for us, with some only minor exceptions with a few guys playing 50-60 games a year. It also ignores the significant backups like Jason Bacachihua, Ty Conklin and Brian Elliott who were our starters for significant stretches of time.

So let's call it 12 goalies expected to carry the load over the course of (coincidentally) 12 seasons (not counting this year or 05-06). I don't know what the league "average" is but I'm guessing it's not at a goalie per season clip.

That's madness to me. And it needs to stop. We've "tried" having it stop several times. At least 3-4 names on that list were supposed to be "the" answer for us in goal and none of them panned out. I think Ryan Miller is the most legitimate starter, in his prime, of that entire group that we've ever had between the pipes. I think it was needed and I hope to god he's re-signed this offseason. </rant>