Blues-Canucks Outlook
By Judd Hall
No. 3 Vancouver Canucks vs. No. 6 St. Louis Blues
Series Price: Vancouver -220, St. Louis +180
Series Format: Vancouver, 2-2-1-1-1
Skinny: I don’t think you could find an opening round series that features two hotter clubs than this one.
The Canucks have been one of the league’s better teams since the beginning of February by going 23-7-2. Vancouver has been able to surge to the Northwest Division championship thanks to solid goaltending, special teams play and gritty defense.
Vancouver’s quality netminding coming from Roberto Luongo, who was shaky in losing his first five starts after returning to the lineup on Jan. 15 after an injured groin. Since the calendar turned over to February, however, he became a man possessed by going 22-6-2 with a 2.20 goals against average. If you can fault Luongo for anything, it’s the fact that he’s only stopping 89.3 shots fired his way in that stretch.
The Canucks also have five players tallying at least 20 goals and another six guys with at least 10 lamp lighters. Daniel Sedin has scored 31 goals with his brother, Henrik, contributing 22 on his own. But they’ve also received breakout efforts by Alex Burrows (28 goals-23 asssists-51 points) and Ryan Kesler (22-33-59). The Mats Sundin experiment hasn’t worked out as well as the team hope with his registering 28 points in 41 games. But Sundin does give the squad a player that has played deep into the postseason with the Maple Leafs…they’ll hope his experience can help soothe some playoff jitters by some of the youngsters.
St. Louis looked like its season was over before it started when young defenseman Erik Johnson fought a golf cart in September and lost. Then the Blues lost Paul Kariya and Eric Brewer for the rest of the year. Yet Andy Murray still helped guide them to the best record in the second half in the NHL with a 25-9-7 mark since Jan. 13.
One of the reasons for the Blues’ miraculous playoff run is Chris Mason coming up strong in place of Manny Legace. The former Predator netminder accounted for all 25 wins St. Louis in the second half of the campaign. He’s also posted a 2.10 GAA and stuffed 92.3 percent of the shots fired his way in that timeframe.
As great as Mason has been for St. Louis, the special teams play in front of him has really helped make the playoffs once again. The Blues are eighth in the league on the power play by scoring 20.5 percent of the time with the advantage. Only two teams had a better penalty killing unit in the NHL than St. Louis, which is sick when you consider they are stopping 83.8 percent of those chances.
Gambling Notes: It’s tough to bet against the Blues right now since they’re 9-1-1 in their last 11 games. If anything, you could rationalize a fade here when you look back at teams in the past few years closing the regular season hot. San Jose is a great example from last year as they flamed out in the West Semifinals.
Vancouver has the talent on hand to make it deep into the playoffs, but they hope they get the good Luongo for this series. But it’s hard to ignore the fact that he is 3-1 with a 2.42 GAA in four starts against the Blues.
Outlook: This is a series that could go down to the wire, which is a hell of a thing to say when you think of the injuries both sides have had. What I expect to see is Mason to win at least one game at General Motors Place against Luongo. Couple Mason with the Blues top notch special teams and they win this series in six.
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