St. Louis Blues ready to try new things in Game 2 against Los Angeles Kings -NHL Playoffs Update
Coming out a series with San Jose Sharks in the opening round of the 2012 National Hockey League (NHL) Stanley Cup Playoffs, St. Louis Blues required a totally different style of play as they faced a team with less defensive manoeuvring and more offence
based playing.
Now as the Blues faced a disappointing loss in Game 1 at home at the Scottrade Center in Saint Louis, Missouri, to Los Angeles Kings, they are now ready to utilise some of their new planning against San Jose’s rival team come Game 2 on Monday, April 30,
2012.
During their Sunday morning practice, Blues were seen to be changing their mentality at approaching the game along with tweaking the line-ups for a more aggressive and better chance at scoring goals instead of being nearly shutout by Jonathan Quick.
It has been reported that St. Louis switched up their two top centre players, David Backes and Patrik Berglund, during the Sunday practice and brought in Alex Steen and Andy McDonald for Backes and David Perron and T.J. Oshie for Berglund.
"They wanted to change it up, and I'm familiar to playing with both Perry and Osh from two years ago, three years ago," Berglund said. "It is what it is. Just change and we'll see if we can generate some offense."
St. Louis Blues head coach, Ken Hitchcock, was definitely not happy with his team’s performance on Saturday night. Instead of playing half the game, he is focusing on moving around his players in such a way that they play the entire matchup with the same
force.
"It lasts 60 minutes, not 32," Hitchcock said. "We played great for 32 minutes [Saturday night], we were the much better team for 32 minutes and then we were the ones that cracked. We took the bad penalties, we had lazy sticks at times, we started turning
the puck over at the blue line trying to make the extra play.”
Blues is not a team that consists of superstar players like Los Angeles has, but rather, the group is more sober and definitely has chemistry.
It will be exciting to see how St. Louis can overcome their challenges come Game 2 on Monday.
Tags: