LEAFS SING THE BLUES !

The St. Louis Blues came in to Scotiabank Arena off an overtime loss to the lowly Montreal Canadiens on Thursday, but sport a rather strong position (28-14-4) in the NHL’s Central Division.  The Colorado Avalanche are running away with that grouping, but Minnesota (63 pts), St. Louis (62) and Nashville (60) will jockey for position well into April.  Vladislav Tarentenko is out and it would appear that Jordan Binnington has lost his starting role to Ville Husso who has started 9 out of the last 10 games.

The Toronto Maple Leafs won a well-deserved game against the Penguins on Thursday and it looks like they wanted to continue scoring streaks from Michael Bunting, Austin Mathews and Mitch Marner during tonight’s game. 

Top 6 rivals pay attention to one another.  Nothing was different from tonight’s contest.  The Leafs had beaten the Blues back in January in a 6-5 back and forth.  St. Louis came out with drive and 2 high speed counter attack goals put them ahead by the 8 minute mark.  William Nylander final got off the snide with his 18^th off nice feeds from linemates John Tavares and Alex Kerfoot.  A pretty good period.

MAN, what a great game !

Let’s start with Willy Nye, on an off wing goal from an Alex Kerfoot rush.  Not 29 seconds later, Brayden Schenn pops in his own rebound after a spectacular first save by Jack Cambell.  Sometimes it shows that SOG aren’t always the main indicator.  WAY under rated TJ Brodie ties it up at 3’s before the buzzer.

The Blues really put an explanation point on tonight’s game with Bradon Saad’s 200^th goal in the third.  Add to that, Captain O’Rielly’s tip in to make it 5-3 and an unexplorable pull of Campbell at the 3:40 mark and a 6-3 empty netter is pretty much all you need to know. 

HOPPER NOTES:  All 4 St. Louis lines scored…Husso is solid at 30+ saves…Welcome Slovakia to the medals at the Olympic Hockey ceremonies ! BOY, could Leafs Nation have used that BIG line tonight ! …should we be looking out for the Oilers and their newly minted (5-0) coach ? …I miss the Olympics already ! … my handsome friend Glennie asks who are the Leafs going to flip to get the “stud RD” the Leafs need ? – I say Michahev, McDermott and Robertson… bullshit stat:  franchises vs franchises over the years…players I wish were on my team Coltan Parenko !  Wayne Simmonds with some strong, trend stetting hits…oh, and could that SKIP the Dishes ad be any more annoying ?

CHEERS !

Cheers – enjoy and discuss !