Blues first look: How do Sharks stack up?
SAN JOSE – The Sharks just got past the team with arguably the best forward line in hockey.
Do they have anything left for the NHL’S hottest team since January?
The Sharks were off Thursday, one day after beating the Colorado Avalanche 3-2 in Game 7 of their second round series. It’s one of the few respites they’ve had over the last month since their postseason began April 10 with a series against the Vegas Golden Knights, which also went the distance.
Game 1 of the Western Conference final against the St. Louis Blues on Saturday will be the Sharks’ 15th game in 32 days. But San Jose is starting the series at home, and the Blues themselves played a six-game series in the first round against Winnipeg and just completed an emotional seven-game series win over Dallas.
“I can’t tell how we’re going to feel,” Sharks center Logan Couture said. “These series kind of bleed into each other here, especially when you go seven.”
Here’s a position-by-position look at how the teams stack up.
Goalies Sharks: After an up-and-down start to the playoffs, when he was pulled twice in the first four games vs. Vegas, Martin Jones has turned in one solid performance after another, giving his team a chance to win the last three games against the Golden Knights and all seven games against the Avalanche. The Sharks went 7-3 in those games, as Jones posted a sparking .928 save percentage and 2.13 goals against average. Jones may need to be even better now for the Sharks, because Ben Bishop was close to brilliant in the second round, and Dallas still lost.
Blues: Aside from a coaching change, the biggest reason the Blues were able to turn their season around was the play of Jordan Binnington. He became the Blues’ number one goalie in early January, and from that point until the end of the regular season, he had a 24-5-1 record, a .930 save
percentage and a 1.83 goals against average, all league bests. St. Louis was tied for last in the NHL with a 9-133 record on the morning of Dec. 3, but finished tied for second in the Central Division at 45-28-9. It will be hard for the Sharks to knock Binnington off his game, although we might have said the same thing about their chances against Marc-andre Fleury and Philipp Grubauer, and look what happened.
Forwards Sharks: For the first time since early in the first round, the Sharks can say everyone in their forward group is available to play now that Joe Pavelski has returned. Couture and Tomas Hertl are two of four players with a leaguebest 14 points (along with Mikko Rantanen and Brent Burns), and Timo Meier has 10 points in 14 games. On paper, it’s a deep group. But the Sharks are going to need more forwards to chip in to get past the stingy Blues. Here’s one thought: Since the Blues are less a finesse team than the Avalanche, can that help big, heavy forwards like Joe Thornton and Evander Kane get going? This isn’t a series that’s going to filled with end-to-end rushes. It’ll be played more below the dots, more in keeping with how the Sharks are built to play.
Blues: St. Louis is deep down the middle with Brayden Schenn, Ryan O’reilly and Tyler Bozak, and a mix of size and skill on the wings, led by Vladimir Tarasenko, Jaden Schwartz, Oskar Sundqvist, Robert Thomas and Robby Fabbri. The Blues haven’t lit up the scoreboard these playoffs with just 34 goals in 13 games, with eight coming from Schwartz. But what they do is wear you down with shift after shift in the offensive zone. In their double overtime win in Game 7 of their series against Dallas, the Blues had 54 shots on goal and 40 scoring chances. That same type of domination was on display in Game 6 of their series against Winnipeg. The Sharks have to be buttoned up in their own end and in the neutral zone, or they’ll face the same fate as the Stars and the Jets.
Defense Sharks: Burns and Erik Karlsson have combined for 25 points so far and the Sharks will continue to need both to stay productive against the Blues. How will the Sharks deploy Burns and Marc-edouard Vlasic in this series? Quite likely they will they skate mostly against Tarasenko, Schenn and Schwartz, although O’reilly has been used in that 1C role as well. If Schenn starts on the top line, that would likely leave the line with O’reilly, Sammy Blais and David Perron to Karlsson and Brenden Dillon. The Sharks’ third defense pair of Justin Braun and Joakim Ryan more than held their own in the second round, although Ryan has played limited minutes.
Blues: St. Louis features Alex Pietrangelo and Colton Parayko on the right side, with both chewing up huge minutes. Pietrangelo’s 11 playoff points are tied for the team lead with Schwartz, and he has 20 points in 28 career regular season games against San Jose. Parayko, too, seems to enjoy playing the Sharks, and he’s only matured as a player since the two teams met in the 2016 west final. Joel Edmundson and Jay Bouwmeester play reliable minutes. There is a question mark regarding the availability of Carl Gunnarsson, who plays on the third pair with Vince Dunn. Gunnarsson is dealing with