Playoff Watch 2021

[TheDizee]

AZ lost again. down 1pt with 3 games in hand now

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

The Blues have a decent shot at the playoffs, but if we make it, it's likely cuz Arizona choked and not cuz we earned it.

It seems most the teams are playing like they don't want the 4th spot, although Arizona did step up against us. We could have come close to putting a lot of breathing room between us and yotes but we choked after that 1st

They’d lost 5 straight and were playing the team they’re vying with. I’m not surprised Arizona found some extra effort. I think it was more of a one-game rally than an indicator of where each team slots. Fortunately, no matter what happens, the Blues won’t be meeting Arizona in the first round.

 

[Stealth JD]

Blues have 13 games left...I think they'll get 5 or 6 wins out of them...meaning they'll lose 7 or 8. I think it comes down to how many points they manage to get in those 7-8 losses whether they'll back into the playoffs or not. If they go 5-8-0 and go from (+ 1) to (-2) in the W/L, they may be in trouble and let one of the other crippled teams limp past them. But if they manage to go 5-5-3 and stay at +1, they may just have enough points in the bank to hold on. lol.

What a shit-show of a division.

 

[Sgt Schultz]

At this point, the race for the fourth spot in the West has entered a debacle phase. The way the bottom five (or four of the last five if we exclude Anaheim) are playing, it may boil down to how each loses, rather than if anybody wins. An OT loss is a win for this group, it seems.

 

[Brian39]

Arizona is now 15-19-4 against teams that aren't the Blues and are 5-2-1 against us. Thank God we don't have to play them again.

I still think we make the playoffs. We have been worse than I thought we would be this year and Minnesota has been better than I expected. But the rest of the division is exactly what I expected. There is a real chance that 56 points will be enough to get into the playoffs and we just need 12 points in the last 13 games to hit that mark.

 

[WeWentBlues]

The Blues will have 4 games in hand on Arizona before we take this ice Thursday. Rooting for the Wild to win in regulation tonight and Wednesday!

Wild taking care of business, winning both Monday and Wednesday games in regulation.

 

[TheDizee]

if these clowns miss the playoffs, army needs to make serious changes. they are gift wrapping the #4 slot for us

 

[Pizza!Pizza!]

Arizona is now 15-19-4 against teams that aren't the Blues and are 5-2-1 against us. Thank God we don't have to play them again.

I still think we make the playoffs. We have been worse than I thought we would be this year and Minnesota has been better than I expected. But the rest of the division is exactly what I expected. There is a real chance that 56 points will be enough to get into the playoffs and we just need 12 points in the last 13 games to hit that mark.

I second this. Shame that injuries kind of derailed the season, but the Blues are very likely to make the playoffs and if they get healthy by then who knows what will happen.

Opposing fans are currently trashing Binnington on the main boards, I think they're starting to get nervous since the Blues are slowly getting healthy.

 

[Cotton McKnight]

I second this. Shame that injuries kind of derailed the season, but the Blues are very likely to make the playoffs and if they get healthy by then who knows what will happen.

Opposing fans are currently trashing Binnington on the main boards, I think they're starting to get nervous since the Blues are slowly getting healthy.

Didn't you hear, he caught lightning in a bottle for a season, he's figured out, he's a horrible person.

 

[The Note]

I second this. Shame that injuries kind of derailed the season, but the Blues are very likely to make the playoffs and if they get healthy by then who knows what will happen.

Opposing fans are currently trashing Binnington on the main boards, I think they're starting to get nervous since the Blues are slowly getting healthy.

I doubt many fans of Vegas/Colorado are worried about facing a team that’s won 13 games in regulation this year and is in the midst of a stretch that includes 3 wins in their last 12 games.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

Arizona is now 15-19-4 against teams that aren't the Blues and are 5-2-1 against us. Thank God we don't have to play them again.

I still think we make the playoffs. We have been worse than I thought we would be this year and Minnesota has been better than I expected. But the rest of the division is exactly what I expected. There is a real chance that 56 points will be enough to get into the playoffs and we just need 12 points in the last 13 games to hit that mark.

But is there any confidence we'd get 12 in the last 13? That's still 6-7-0, for a team that's 5-10-4 in its last 19. Wherever we end up, figure we'll have to be absolutely above Arizona and Los Angeles on points or they'll beat us on the first tiebreak.

I agree, that cutoff line keeps marching down because no one is winning - but with Arizona having 7 games between Los Angeles (x3) and San Jose (x4), someone is going to start picking up some points. If everyone splits those, we end up with something like Arizona 51, San Jose 45, Los Angeles 44. If Arizona drops all of those (this is probably our best-case scenario), we get Arizona 45, San Jose 47, Los Angeles 48. The Kings also still have 4 to play against Anaheim; they're 2-1-1 on the season, repeating that + Arizona bombing out gets them to 53 with Minnesota, Colorado x4, and us left to account for.

That 5/10 game in Los Angeles might well make-or-break everything for us. If guys think they'll wait until it gets truly desperate before they try to flip the switch, it's never going on. It's got to get flipped now.

 

[Sgt Schultz]

Our edge is we now have four games in hand vs. Arizona, the only team we are chasing. The Kings have the same number of games in hand, but are chasing three teams, including us.

The bad news is we have to come up with a net of two points in those four games while not giving up more than three points to the Kings down the stretch. That sounds easy, but nothing is easy right now.

That is the short-term picture. The longer-term picture is the reward for getting over that hill is playing either Colorado or Vegas, who have collectively won 18 of their last 20. They will probably cool off from those runs, but they are going to have to cool off a lot and we (or any of the other three) would have to heat up a ton to steal that series. It happens, but I would not bet my life savings on it. Colorado and Vegas are probably going to be competing with each other down to the end, so I doubt they will be caught napping when the playoffs start.

 

[Brian39]

But is there any confidence we'd get 12 in the last 13? That's still 6-7-0, for a team that's 5-10-4 in its last 19. Wherever we end up, figure we'll have to be absolutely above Arizona and Los Angeles on points or they'll beat us on the first tiebreak.

I agree, that cutoff line keeps marching down because no one is winning - but with Arizona having 7 games between Los Angeles (x3) and San Jose (x4), someone is going to start picking up some points. If everyone splits those, we end up with something like Arizona 51, San Jose 45, Los Angeles 44. If Arizona drops all of those (this is probably our best-case scenario), we get Arizona 45, San Jose 47, Los Angeles 48. The Kings also still have 4 to play against Anaheim; they're 2-1-1 on the season, repeating that + Arizona bombing out gets them to 53 with Minnesota, Colorado x4, and us left to account for.

That 5/10 game in Los Angeles might well make-or-break everything for us. If guys think they'll wait until it gets truly desperate before they try to flip the switch, it's never going on. It's got to get flipped now.

I do feel fairly confident in our ability to hit that number. Choosing 19 games picks up right after a 4 game win streak. Expand the sample by 4 games and the Blues have picked up 22 points in their last 23 games. Remove 4 games from your sample and they've picked up 11 points in the last 15 games. An 11 in 15 pace won't get us to 56, but it would be pretty damn close and I'm a lot happier with the Blues' game for the last 2 weeks than I was for the prior 3-4 weeks. We match up well against the Wild and we've played the Avs pretty well this year. Given their COVID pause, we should be able to pull 2-3 points from them in these next 3 games.

If we actually had to go 6-7 with no other possibilities then I wouldn't be quite as confident. But 5-6-2 also gets the job done. We've gone to OT in 28% of our games this season, so I think the odds of us picking up another loser point (or 2) are pretty good.

We're not a lock to get 12 points in the last 13 games, but I think that is more likely than Arizona getting 11+ points in their final 9, SJ getting 15+ in their last 10 or LA getting 16+ in their last 13. Of these 4 teams, we have the 2nd best record over the last 10 games at 3-6-1. And that is just 1 point shy of the best record, which is the Kings at 4-6-0.

Again, we aren't a lock to make the playoffs, but I'd rather be in our position than any of the other teams vying for the #4 spot.

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

I really don’t know how a staff is supposed to coach a team with these conditions. There are already the Covid protocols and abbreviated season. Then the Blues had injury decimation which derailed their early season momentum. Then multiple indeterminate pauses, then condensed schedule, 7 games in a row vs one team, etc. I think Berube needs to push the right buttons, but I also think it would be foolish to use this season as the defining period for judging a coaching staff.

I think the Blues will make the play-offs, but I don’t think they’ll be ready for the dogfight the first round will bring. Not with Tarasenko still floating and not finding his game, with the best lines still a mystery, and without the anchor of a 4th line that cemented the team identity during crucial stretches. There are some good pieces, but not a lot that makes me expect them to gel into something greater than the sum of its parts.

The X factor is that these guys know they’ve done it before. They don’t look super confident to me right now, but it’s not hard to imagine them finding that level of confidence for a short time. I’d like to play Vegas in the first round. If the Blues beat them, it will be sweeter. And I kind of feel partial to the Avs this season, if someone else has to win the division.

 

[Brian39]

I really don’t know how a staff is supposed to coach a team with these conditions. There are already the Covid protocols and abbreviated season. Then the Blues had injury decimation which derailed their early season momentum. Then multiple indeterminate pauses, then condensed schedule, 7 games in a row vs one team, etc. I think Berube needs to push the right buttons, but I also think it would be foolish to use this season as the defining period for judging a coaching staff.

I think the Blues will make the play-offs, but I don’t think they’ll be ready for the dogfight the first round will bring. Not with Tarasenko still floating and not finding his game, with the best lines still a mystery, and without the anchor of a 4th line that cemented the team identity during crucial stretches. There are some good pieces, but not a lot that makes me expect them to gel into something greater than the sum of its parts.

The X factor is that these guys know they’ve done it before. They don’t look super confident to me right now, but it’s not hard to imagine them finding that level of confidence for a short time. I’d like to play Vegas in the first round. If the Blues beat them, it will be sweeter. And I kind of feel partial to the Avs this season, if someone else has to win the division.

I have mixed feelings about judging the coaching staff. I don't disagree with anything you're saying, but I don't think that these irregularities fully excuse what we have been seeing.

The PP has been inexcusably poor and that shouldn't be impacted much by COVID weirdness. In the 3 years leading up to this season, Krug was 13th league-wide in PP points. He ran a Boston PP that almost always had one-timer threats on both sides. We have chosen not to put a one-timer threat on the right side of the top PP unit pretty much all season, even though that is Mike Hoffman's biggest asset. Hoffman was 7th league-wide in PP goals over the last 3 NHL seasons coming in to this year and has consistently shown us that his one timer from the right point/circle is lethal. We brought in two PP specialists this summer who should mesh stylistically and Perron's one-timer on the left side is good enough to keep PK units honest. The coaches have consistently refused to put Hoffman on a top unit that has struggled mightily. Hoffman is 2nd on the team in PP points from the 2nd unit. The PP overall is 18th in the league even though it has all the tools to be among the league's best. There is a personnel issue with the PP and that is 100% on the coaching staff. Krug and Hoffman have played 13:58 of total PP minutes together this season while the PP sits 18th in the league. The trio of Krug/Perron/Hoffman have 10:10 total PP time together this year. That is unacceptable and has absolutely nothing to do with COVID. It is stunning that we haven't tried a 1-3-1 top unit of:

-----------ROR-------------
Perron-Schenn-Hoffman
-----------Krug-------------

Sub Schwartz or Kyrou in for Schenn if they prove better at the bumper role. ROR is incredible down low and loves that little wrap play from the goal line. Perron and Hoffman can both hammer one timers and Krug is great at dishing the puck into the wheelhouse on either side. Krug is also creative/skilled enough to walk the line as needed and that is 3 of the 4 forwards on the ice who are more than capable of winning puck battles. On paper that should be a top 5 unit in the league and we just haven't tried it. We have all the tools to mirror the PP setup that made Krug an elite PP QB but have elected to try and force our PP to work in other ways. It sits 18th in the league and our $6.5M AAV PP specialist is outside the top 100 in PP points.

I also have a hard time pinning our brutal 2nd periods on COVID. We consistently play fairly well in the first only to come out of the 1st intermission half-asleep. I don't know how COVID irregularities cause that.

I'm not saying fire Berube and I want to be clear that I lean more towards the thought that COVID has hurt this group than I do the group being irredeemably broken. But there are things that can't be ignored and Berube's inability to maximize the strengths of Krug and Hoffman are very concerning to me.

 

[Ted Hoffman]

I do feel fairly confident in our ability to hit that number. Choosing 19 games picks up right after a 4 game win streak. Expand the sample by 4 games and the Blues have picked up 22 points in their last 23 games. Remove 4 games from your sample and they've picked up 11 points in the last 15 games. An 11 in 15 pace won't get us to 56, but it would be pretty damn close and I'm a lot happier with the Blues' game for the last 2 weeks than I was for the prior 3-4 weeks. We match up well against the Wild and we've played the Avs pretty well this year. Given their COVID pause, we should be able to pull 2-3 points from them in these next 3 games.

If we actually had to go 6-7 with no other possibilities then I wouldn't be quite as confident. But 5-6-2 also gets the job done. We've gone to OT in 28% of our games this season, so I think the odds of us picking up another loser point (or 2) are pretty good.

Really not trying to be flippant or snotty, but if we include the whole season we're 19-18-6 and that's 45 points in 44 games. We can discuss what the "right" jump-off point is, but we've been sub-.500 for any stretch of games going back to 2/24 unless we talk about their last 5. Somewhere in there, recent results matter and I'd say "last 5" is less representative than "last 10" or "last 15" or "last __."

I think the point about matching up well with the Wild is a good one, but it still has to translate into Ws. 2-1 isn't enough to say "yeah, we've got their number, we can take them in a majority of the last 5." We've played the Avs pretty well, we're still 1-4 with that 1 coming at the start of the season and the last game being yet another one of those "we should have won this and gave it away" games. It would be nice to get 2-3 in the next 3, especially with Colorado down Rantanen and Grubauer, but again that relies on us taking advantage - something we continue to not do. We might be better the last 2 weeks, we still have to get ahead and close games out and not take long stretches of games off and let teams off the mat.

On paper, we're not in terrible shape for reasons you note. In reality, we're going to close with 5 games in 7 days and Minnesota will be the final two, and right before that is a potentially ultra-critical date in Los Angeles. By the time we go to LA for that game, Arizona will be done and we'll know what (if anything) we have to do to finish ahead of them. IMO we have about 8 games to get as many points as we possibly can. If we think we match up well against COL and MIN and we can take ANH x2, we damn well better take care of business now.

 

[Brian39]

Really not trying to be flippant or snotty, but if we include the whole season we're 19-18-6 and that's 45 points in 44 games. We can discuss what the "right" jump-off point is, but we've been sub-.500 for any stretch of games going back to 2/24 unless we talk about their last 5. Somewhere in there, recent results matter and I'd say "last 5" is less representative than "last 10" or "last 15" or "last __."

I think the point about matching up well with the Wild is a good one, but it still has to translate into Ws. 2-1 isn't enough to say "yeah, we've got their number, we can take them in a majority of the last 5." We've played the Avs pretty well, we're still 1-4 with that 1 coming at the start of the season and the last game being yet another one of those "we should have won this and gave it away" games. It would be nice to get 2-3 in the next 3, especially with Colorado down Rantanen and Grubauer, but again that relies on us taking advantage - something we continue to not do. We might be better the last 2 weeks, we still have to get ahead and close games out and not take long stretches of games off and let teams off the mat.

On paper, we're not in terrible shape for reasons you note. In reality, we're going to close with 5 games in 7 days and Minnesota will be the final two, and right before that is a potentially ultra-critical date in Los Angeles. By the time we go to LA for that game, Arizona will be done and we'll know what (if anything) we have to do to finish ahead of them. IMO we have about 8 games to get as many points as we possibly can. If we think we match up well against COL and MIN and we can take ANH x2, we damn well better take care of business now.

If we had to go above .500 I'd share your level of concern, but we are talking about a target where we continue to go under .500. And the 56 point target assumes that the sub-.500 Yotes suddenly go .555 or the sub-.500 Kings suddenly go .577. I agree that I'm not confident about wining the majority of remaining games against the Wild, but we very likely don't need to win the majority of those games. Going 2-2-1 against them would put us slightly ahead of schedule for that 56 point target.

I'm fairly comfortable using Parayko's return as a better predictor of the next 3 weeks than the last 10 or 15 that include our worst stretch of play on the season. We're 3-3 in that stretch, which included 2 vs Vegas, 2 vs Minnesota, 1 vs Colorado and 1 vs Arizona. We're 12-8-2 with Parayko in the lineup and the D is noticeably better when he is playing (even when he is clearly not 100%). I think that is a better indicator of our ability to play near-.500 hockey than our godawful 14 game stretch from 3/6-4/5.

Closing with 5 in 7 sucks, but bear in mind that both us and Arizona close with 6 games in 9 days. We also have a benefit of playing our final games knowing exactly what we have to do and that B2B vs Minny will be against a team that is very likely locked into a 3 seed and looking to rest a bunch of guys before playoffs. Minnesota has already started dialing back Kaprizov's ice time to keep him fresh for playoffs (he's gone from 18:30 a night to 17 a night in his last 8 games and 6 of his 16 sub-17 minute nights on the year have been in that stretch). If we are competing with the Kings, they also close with 5 games in 7 days, except they get to play an Avs team likely fighting for a 1 seed in 4 of those games. The new schedule sucks, but I'm not sure we are in any worse shape than the 2 teams we are likely competing against.

Again, we're not a lock and the optimism is cautious. But I'd rather be the Blues than the Yotes, Sharks or Kings right now.

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

Pos	Team​	PT+	GR	RW	ROW	Max PTS
1​	Colorado​	+21​	11​	28​	31​	88​
2​	Vegas​	+23​	9​	27​	33​	88​
3​	Minnesota​	+18​	9​	26​	30​	83​
4​	St. Louis​	+1​	11​	14​	18​	68​
5​	Arizona​	-1​	8​	17​	18​	63​
6​	Los Angeles​	-5​	11​	15​	16​	62​
7​	San Jose​	-6​	9​	12​	13​	59​
8​	Anaheim​	-13​	8​	9​	13​	51​

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

After all the 4/24 action. I won’t bother switching Colorado and Vegas in the standings.

 

[TheDizee]

would rather play colorado than vegas as i have stated before.

vegas actually can win without refs holding their hands and has proven goaltenders.

 

[RR10]

would rather play colorado than vegas as i have stated before.

vegas actually can win without refs holding their hands and has proven goaltenders.

I’d rather face Vegas and believe we have a better chance against them. Avs has missed lots of guys lately and they still dominate us. Take out 2-3 top players from guys from Vegas and they are not much better than us. An Avs PP is like an automatic goal when Rantanen is in with Mack. No thanks.

 

[WATTAGE4451]

would rather play colorado than vegas as i have stated before.

vegas actually can win without refs holding their hands and has proven goaltenders.

Fleury has as many bad playoff performances as he does good ones although they have another option in lehner if he struggles

Grubauer has been solid in his last 2 playoffs but he does have an injury history and they have no solid backup if grubauer goes down. After francouz tanking their postseason last year playing injured before they decided to rely on hutchinson and francouz being out this full season, I'm surprised they let grubauer have to carry such a workload by giving him incompetent backups all season with mishkasucking, then only dumpster diving for Johansson and then dubnyk instead of getting a real backup.

If grubauer gets injured or slumps, they are done as they have no plan B. Even cup winning teams have often had to turn to their backup goalie in a few games in the postseason a few times. Fleury had to be benched a few times and other cup teams have had to rely on backups for a game or 2 before as well.

 

[Sgt Schultz]

Coyotes looked good last night (I see a lot of their games here), but the asterisk is they were playing the Kings.....who looked disinterested.

I was torn as to who to pull for in that one. On one hand, the Coyotes pulled back ahead of us by a point. On the other hand, if we can't pick up two points in the three games we have in hand on them, we don't deserve to be in the playoffs. The Coyotes win put the Kings more on the ropes. Based on our history with the Kings, I do not want the game later to be meaningful for them.

Getting the three or four team race down to two is a good thing.

 

[TheDizee]

Coyotes/Sharks tonight, chance to gain another game on ARI if they lose

 

[Pizza!Pizza!]

Blues are fine, deep run coming up.

 

[Sgt Schultz]

Coyotes/Sharks tonight, chance to gain another game on ARI if they lose

Normally, that game would be on the tube here. In past years, we had about an even number of Coyote and Avalanche games. This year it is almost all Coyotes.......except tonight. They have the Suns game on, and NBCSN is broadcasting, I kid you not, the college lacrosse draft. I didn't even know there was such a thing.

Right now NHL Network has it on, but I am not sure how long they are going to stick with it. 2-0 Sharks 8 minutes into the first.