League Leaders Vancouver Canucks host the struggling St. Louis Blues
The second last game of Thursday will be played at the Rogers Arena as the home team; the Vancouver Canucks play the St. Louis Blues. This is the fourth and final meeting between the two sides. Out of the three meetings, the Blue have won two games, the
first and third while the Canucks has won the second game only.
After a 3-1 loss to the Canucks, the Blue bounced back with a brilliant performance that saw Patrik Berglund score the winning goal as the Blues won the game 3-2. Both the Western Conference teams square off against each other with the Blue sitting in the
13th spot with still a chance of making it into the play-offs as the teams above them haven’t been able to perform to their fullest.
The Canucks on the other hand have been the dominating force during the course of the season and scored 85 points. This has not only put the Canucks in the lead of the league but this is also their best performance during a season.
The Blues started off the season pretty well after which they have been on the low. They have faced a lot of disappointment and things weren’t looking good until recently. The Blues General Manager decided to change things and brought in two players from
the Avalanche.
Both the players, Chris Stewart and Kevin Shattenkirk have played very well in the opening games and have added a lot of strength to the offence that was outperformed every now and then. Though the Blues lost the game this past Tuesday against the Avalanche
4-3, they still had a lot of positives to take from the game.
Chris Stewart scored his first goal which levelled the score but their defence was able to stop the Avalanche from scoring once again. Andy McDonald struck the final blow as the Blues lost the game in the end.
"We had some decent opportunities in the third period," St. Louis coach Davis Payne said. "Clearly (we) were not very good in the execution department."
The Blue have played 59 games in the season so far out of which they have won 27 games in regulation time, nine games in overtime to score 63 points. On the other hand, the Canucks have played 61 games out of which they have won 38 games in regulation time,
nine games in overtime to score a total of 85 points.
The Canucks have been in superb form which has seen them winning seven of their last 11 games during the course of this month. However, they lost the game this past Tuesday against the Montreal Canadiens in a close game that ended 3-2.
"For whatever reason, our battle level wasn't there," Ryan Kesler said. "After that 10 minutes I thought we dominated the game, but you've got to give it to their goalie."
The Canucks are definitely the stronger of the two teams but keeping in mind their unpredictability in the last few games, anything is possible.
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