On Wednesday night, the St. Louis Blues scored six times to defeat the Dallas Stars in the seventh game of their second-round series. The win means that for just the third time since 1970, St. Louis will advance to the third round of the playoffs.
The Blues have learned some lessons along the way, and that knowledge was evident in Game 7.
Head coach Ken Hitchcock was paying attention when Dallas nearly blew its 3-0 lead over the Blues in Game 6, and when his team took a big lead in the first period of Game 7, he vowed it would not repeat the same mistakes the Stars had.
Asked by NBC’s Pierre McGuire midway through the second period about maintaining his team’s lead, Hitchcock had those lessons boiled down to a simple message.
"We’ve got to skate on the first touch," he said. "If we stand still and flip pucks, that’s exactly what Dallas did in [Game] 6. We’ve got to skate on first touch."
The Blues may not have executed that message to perfection, but they did more than enough.
It’s well-known that teams tend to surrender more shots when ho ...
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Article written by Jonathan Willis
Aggressive Blues Take Big Step on Road to Stanley Cup in Game 7 Rout vs. Stars
May 11th, 2016 by Jonathan Willis Leave a reply »
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