I'm sure they won't disrupt the line-up in the 2nd of a back to back where they won the first game, its not Berube's style. I think maybe he displaces Kyrou when he returns and bumps Kyrou to replace Walker in the line-up? JR said who he was practicing with, but I can't remember or find exactly where that was reported.
I still have absolutely zero concern about Arizona. They are playing at a .500 points percentage while we are at a .591. Exclude their games against us and they are 5-7-2. They only get to play us once more, so why should we believe that they will suddenly start playing .550+ hockey against the teams that they have so far been .429 against? That's what it is going to take if we play .500 hockey from here on out. LA is still the worst 5 on 5 team in the league by pretty much every single underlying metric and they are riding .917 goaltending to .550 hockey. They are the 23rd best team in the league at 5 on 5 by actual goals for percentage and 21st in goals for per 60 at 5 on 5. They have riden Petersen's .928 SV%, a 25% PP and an 86% PK to a pretty mediocre record and I don't see much room for improvement above their current .550 pace.
And they lost their only game to the Ducks. And they went 1-1 with the Avs. And a shootout loss to the Sharks.
You have to include Arizona in the "awful team" category if LA is in there, which means that you have 4 clear non playoff teams in a division where only 4 teams miss the playoffs.
I want to buy this, and then I think back to December 2003 when we had games in hand on Detroit and were only a couple points back, and it was don't worry, we've got games in hand. Even as late as January 19 when
I don't think anyone really worries about Colorado missing because they have enough talent to will them into the post season. Shit, Mackinnon could do it alone himself. It also doesn't feel like they have any particular trouble with bad teams, but they haven't played the amount of games against them that we have (Aves - 6-3-0, Blues - 10-7-2). Now you could say that we are banged up and losing more games than we would because we dont have the talent to sustain a good points %, but honestly I dont buy that. I haven't felt comfortable with any of the Blues' wins in weeks now. They will look good for stretches and completely break down and let bad teams right back into the game, hence the high scoring close games. Not to mention that Arizona gives us an extremely hard time as well as LA. It could be the case that once we get guys back, we wont have to worry about how we're playing because it'll be business as usual, but by that point we'll be playing the top 3 teams in our division and it's going to be much harder to win those games. These are games you should win handedly and if you're barely squeaking out 2 points every other game, you've got more problems than just injuries.
He almost did last game on a Michigan/ lacrosse goal attempt. Husso and the outside of the post combined to make the stop
