The St Louis Blues have not scored a goal in seven periods of playoff hockey and for the first time in their history have been shut out in consecutive postseason games.
The Blues lost their second straight game in the series against the San Jose Sharks on Thursday night and now find themselves in a two games to one hole with another game in the Shark tank looming on Saturday night. If St. Louis wants to have a chance in this series they are going to need to find their “A” game again and find a way to win game four and bring the series back home tied at 2-2. If they struggle again in game four and lose, it would be a very tough path to victory for the Blues in the remainder of the series.
St. Louis Blues Must Win Game Four of Western Conference Final
The Sharks seem to have found their stride after a game one loss in St. Louis as goalie Martin Jones has been outstanding in the last two games rendering a normally potent Blues offense basically stagnant.
As for the Blues goalie, Brian Elliott was pulled in the 3rd period after giving up his 3rd goal on only 14 shots in favor of Jake Allen. Perhaps searching for a spark, coach Ken Hitchcock could really use a lift on his offense. Regular playmakers such as Vladimir Tarasenko, Paul Stastny, Alex Steen, and aside from a goal in game one, David Backes, have been missing in action in the first three games of this series. It’s always a knee jerk reaction after a couple bad losses to blame the goalie, but when the team isn’t scoring there’s more to it than that.
Backes along with Jaden Schwartz and Alex Pietrangelo all said that they let Elliott down last night.
In his post game press conference Hitchcock said that he pulled Elliott because he “didn’t like the third goal” but mainly wanted to “give his team a breath.” Hitchcock also said he will sleep on the decision on his starting goalie for game four.
Hitchcock and company will need to get to work Friday on finding a way to create better scoring chances as well as committing fewer turnovers. The Blues would benefit from a fast start on Saturday night and would love to find the back of the net early and often. In order to get momentum back in the series and have a chance to move on to the Stanley Cup Final, the Blues face a must win situation in game four.
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