Post-Game Talk: Series Discussion: Stars @ Blues

[LETSGOBLUES88]

8:30 start time on Thursday. So that sucks.

Yes, it will start on Thursday and most likely end on Friday.

Thank you NHL

 

[Twisted Blue]

If you take Trouba over Heiskanen I question your ability to evaluate hockey players.

Question whatever you want. Trouba is the better player this year. Perhaps Heiskanen will improve but he is not close to Trouba physically and Trouba had a 50 point season.

 

[Klank Loves You]

Seguin - Benn - Radulov are serious scoring threats on the top line, and had some great shifts against the Preds. Containing that line is a key to this series.

Amen. Limit their impact, and only Bishop can save them. Preds were a joke of a division winner.

Im curious if Swizzel-Schwartz is actually back. If he can keep his scoring touch, our 2nd, 3rd, and 4th lines are better compared to their counter parts. Cant wait for Fabs to light up the lamp.

 

[Jordeau]

I thought I'd share some statistics I pulled from Natural Stat Trick. These are compiled starting from January 1st, which includes 42 games for Dallas and 45 for St. Louis. It might be a bit disingenuous to not include to full season, but the Blues are really a completely different team now than they were to start the year.

Most advanced stats favor us pretty heavily. While I think the Blues are the better team, I don't think the difference is as significant as the data suggests (again, this is a pretty favorable timeline/sample size for the Blues). Dallas's team defense has been very strong all season, and their top line is scoring at will right now. And of course everyone knows how good Ben Bishop is when healthy. Dallas also has some interesting young players who played significant roles in their series win against Nashville, most notably Heiskanen and Hintz. I'm excited to see how they perform relative to our own young guys, Dunn and Thomas.

Overall, I think I'd favor the Blues' chances going into the series, but it will definitely be a hard-fought and heavy series that could go either way. I'll say Blues in 6.

Corsi For	Corsi Againt	Corsi For %	Shots For	Shots Against	Shots For %
2150	1896	53.14	1189	986	54.67
1956	1937	50.24	1042	1042	50

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Goals For	Goals Against	Goals For %	Expected Goals For	Expected Goals Against	Expected Goals For %
97	65	59.88	95.01	73.1	56.52
64	61	51.2	80.12	73.78	52.06

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Chances For	Chances Against	Chances For %	High Danger Chances For	High Danger Chances Against	High Danger Changes For %
1064	905	54.04	459	333	57.95
935	825	53.13	409	343	54.39

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Team Shooting %	Team Save %	PDO
8.16	93.41	1.016
6.14	94.15	1.003

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

 

[Twisted Blue]

Trouba ****ing sucks though. Bout one of the most braindead defenders

What stats back up your opinion? He was a 50 point player this year and you don’t get 42 assists by being terrible.

 

[Novacain]

Question whatever you want. Trouba is the better player this year. Perhaps Heiskanen will improve but he is not close to Trouba physically and Trouba had a 50 point season.

Sadly for Trouba he is absolute garbage at things like zone exits and what not and we kinda showed that in the series we just played. Also, Trouba out did Petro in points and hits, so I guess he’s better then him, making us winning round 1 more impressive since the Jets No.3 defender is apparently better then our 1.

 

[KirkOut]

f*** these 9:30 start times. I'm glad I have Friday off...

 

[LGB]

I thought I'd share some statistics I pulled from Natural Stat Trick. These are compiled starting from January 1st, which includes 42 games for Dallas and 45 for St. Louis. It might be a bit disingenuous to not include to full season, but the Blues are really a completely different team now than they were to start the year.

Most advanced stats favor us pretty heavily. While I think the Blues are the better team, I don't think the difference is as significant as the data suggests (again, this is a pretty favorable timeline/sample size for the Blues). Dallas's team defense has been very strong all season, and their top line is scoring at will right now. And of course everyone knows how good Ben Bishop is when healthy. Dallas also has some interesting young players who played significant roles in their series win against Nashville, most notably Heiskanen and Hintz. I'm excited to see how they perform relative to our own young guys, Dunn and Thomas.

Overall, I think I'd favor the Blues' chances going into the series, but it will definitely be a hard-fought and heavy series that could go either way. I'll say Blues in 6.

Corsi For	Corsi Againt	Corsi For %	Shots For	Shots Against	Shots For %
2150	1896	53.14	1189	986	54.67
1956	1937	50.24	1042	1042	50

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Goals For	Goals Against	Goals For %	Expected Goals For	Expected Goals Against	Expected Goals For %
97	65	59.88	95.01	73.1	56.52
64	61	51.2	80.12	73.78	52.06

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Chances For	Chances Against	Chances For %	High Danger Chances For	High Danger Chances Against	High Danger Changes For %
1064	905	54.04	459	333	57.95
935	825	53.13	409	343	54.39

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Team Shooting %	Team Save %	PDO
8.16	93.41	1.016
6.14	94.15	1.003

[TBODY] [/TBODY]

Good comparison. May I suggest converting the non-percentage statistics into per 60 numbers? I think it would make a better comparison given the sample sizes aren't equal and a per 60 number would make those numbers easier to contextualize. Don't feel like you have to go back and do that if it's a lot of work though lol.

 

[Dbrownss]

What stats back up your opinion? He was a 50 point player this year and you don’t get 42 assists by being terrible.

Jake Gardiner had that many points last year........

I'm not even talking about point production. I watch the guy, and he's always struck me as someone that lacked actual dzone IQ. I want my defense to defend first and score 2nd.

 

[DuckTech]

I think it is going to be a hell of a series, so much so I had to take my Avatar to the next level.

I'm gonna give you a mountain tempo in A minor!

 

[AjaxManifesto]

Ball buster series

 

[kimzey59]

Question whatever you want. Trouba is the better player this year. Perhaps Heiskanen will improve but he is not close to Trouba physically and Trouba had a 50 point season.

I'm not sure that Trouba is better than Heiskanen.
That said, I do tend to agree that the Jet's D overall is better than Dallas'.

The Jet's D has 5 very good players in Buff, Morrisey, Trouba, Myers and Kulikov.
Even Chiarot had a better year than any of Polak/Oleksiak/Lovejoy.

I seriously question the Dallas D after their top 3. To the point where I think it's an area they can be fairly easily exploited.
Even with their top 3, I question their ability to really handle a heavy forecheck(they haven't really faced one yet).

Where Dallas is really better is the defensive play from their forwards. Winnipeg is well known as a "run and gun" team with a lot of their forwards being outright liabilities in the defensive zone. Dallas has their big top line, but beyond that they are a "grind it out" type of team. And even their top line is above average defensively(Seguin may cheat at times, but Benn and Radulov don't).

I think the real question for us is going to be our ability to get the puck deep and work on their defense. The entire series could be played from the neutral zone if we have problems in that area.

 

[Dbrownss]

In 16, the Blues had Klingberg scared to retrieve pucks because Backes and Brouwer turned into him peanut butter, he bailed on pucks. Do that again.

 

[mw2noobbuster]

In 16, the Blues had Klingberg scared to retrieve pucks because Backes and Brouwer turned into peanut butter, he bailed on pucks. Do that again.

Oh jesus, so that's where Backes and Brouwer went? They're being sold at the market now.

 

[mk80]

Agreed but I'd put Connor Scheifle Wheeler ahead of them.

Blues wont take Dallas lightly. I'm not taking anything away from Dallas but everyone wanted to play Nashville....they're going to be playing a bigger, faster and higher scoring team.....they're going to have to earn this series inch by inch.

I agree this will be a hard fought series. The Stars are a tough opponent and will certainly battle hard, plus like the Blues it seems the Stars have really bought into their coach’s system by all accounts.

 

[kimzey59]

Oh jesus, so that's where Backes and Brouwer went? They're being sold at the market now.

They might be on the shelf at the market, but nobody's buying them.
Combined this year they had 41 points in 145 games(Brouwer: 12-9-21 in 75 games; Backes: 7-13-20 in 70 games).

 

[Alklha]

The start times were to be expected, it is how the NHL works it in the second round. If we get past Dallas then it isn't something that is needed again.

It'll be the same for the Monday & Wednesday games in Dallas.

 

[Snake Plissken]

Yes, it will start on Thursday and most likely end on Friday.

Thank you NHL

Haha that’s a 3:30a.m. start time for me. Guess I’ll have to be late for work again. At least I don’t have to listen to the NBC muppets, only time I prefer watching a German or French broadcast.

 

[Twisted Blue]

Sadly for Trouba he is absolute garbage at things like zone exits and what not and we kinda showed that in the series we just played. Also, Trouba out did Petro in points and hits, so I guess he’s better then him, making us winning round 1 more impressive since the Jets No.3 defender is apparently better then our 1.

First, Trouba is not the Jets #3 defender and his ice time is second only to Byfuglien. Second, Trouba's or Heiskanen's play in one series (against different opponents) is a really weak sample size. Third, points and hits are not the only way to compare the two players, but you have failed to provide anything else for discussion. As I said earlier, think what you want of my opinion but right now I would take Trouba over Heiskanen on the ice with no other factors involved (age, salary, other rostered players).

 

[execwrite1]

Which line do the Blues match against the Seguin line? The series depends on stopping them.

 

[David Dennison]

Which line do the Blues match against the Seguin line? The series depends on stopping them.

I mean, it's gotta be Oreilly, right?

 

[Note Worthy]

For those who have The Athletic this is a good article previewing the series.

2019 NHL playoff preview: Blues vs. Stars

 

[LGB]

For those who have The Athletic this is a good article previewing the series.

2019 NHL playoff preview: Blues vs. Stars

It was a really good break down. After reading that it seems to me like the key to this series will be beating Bishop, the numbers he has posted the last few months are insane.

The main reason the Stars have advanced this far, above all else, is the play of Bishop. He’s been stellar all season leading the league in save percentage with a .934, well above the next best, but has been particularly unbeatable since the All-Star break. In 14 regular season games since, Bishop had a sterling .959 save percentage. If you were expecting him to come back down to earth (I certainly was) that wasn’t exactly the case as he posted a .945 against Nashville, behind only New York’s Robin Lehner for the playoff lead. That means that in the 20 games he’s played since February, he’s stopped 95.4 percent of shots he’s faced. Based on the shots he’s faced, Bishop has stopped 1.13 expected goals-per-60 during that time frame, meaning with Bishop in net playing like this the Stars are basically already up 1-0. Only one other goalie was above 0.5, Philipp Grubauer.

 

[Dbrownss]

Lucky for us Bishop is due to get hurt rolling out of bed.

 

[MissouriMook]

I really think the key to this series for the Blues is to get Bishop moving laterally in his crease as often as they can, whether that is moving the puck East-West above or below the goal line. He has a tendency to go down early and stay down on his pads, so not only will this create issues for him to square to pucks, but it also put pressure on his lower body which could potentially knock him out of the series or cause him to lose effectiveness if he can't elevate or push like he needs to.

That and Tarasenko engaging Beast Mode like he often does against the Green Menace.