The St. Louis Blues return to home ice at Enterprise Center tonight looking to punch a ticket to the second round of the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs. First, the boys in blues must put away the Minnesota Wild.
Vladimir Tarasenko will of course be one to watch tonight as he is fresh off a hat trick in Game 5. Tarasenko put away his first two goals in just 1:28. He’s now the just the third player in franchise history with multiple playoff hat tricks.
During a day off, head coach Craig Berube spoke to reporters about Tarasenko’s ability to lead by example and that he has the ability to be a power forward.
“I think he's done a pretty good job of it all year to be honest with you. Right from training camp on, he came in very focused and determined, put all the stuff in the summer behind him and went and played hockey and, you know, played really good hockey for us very consistent hockey most of the year,” Berube said.
Also of note, team captain Ryan O’Reillly has seven points in the last five games and David Perron has five goals in that same span.
For the Wild, Kirill Kaprizov has been a scoring threat as expected. He leads the Wild in the playoffs with eight points so far and was also the leading offensive producer during the regular season with 108 points (47 goals) in 81 games.
However, Kaprizov was the only one to score for Minnesota in Game 5.
Heading into Game 6, the Blues are statistically the better team according to NHL.com. The NHL’s Game Center shows the Blues lead in each category including power play percentage (30 to 21.1, making St. Louis third in the league) and penalty kill percentage (79 to 70, eighth in the leauge.)
Netminder Jordan Binnington (2-2) now holds the franchise record for playoff wins with 18 after Game 5.
“(Binnington’s) starts before the playoffs were really good. He's winning games, showing confidence, all the things that he does great, he was doing down the stretch and we had full confidence in him. We talked about, you know, he was not going to start the series, but stay ready,” Berube told reporters after today’s morning skate.
“It's nice to have two goals for sure. I think nowadays there's a lot of teams, you got to use two goalies, I mean, not everybody. But in our case, we used both guys this year that played really well for us,” Berube added.
At this time the Blues have released the projected lineup for Game 6 with Binnington set to start.
Game time is set for 8:30 p.m.
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