Time is running out for the St. Louis Blues to make the playoffs.
Only two games remain in the regular season for St. Louis (43-31-6) Taven Bryan Jersey , which is on the outside looking in when it comes to the Western Conference playoff race. The Blues have a chance to move past the Colorado Avalanche for the second wild-card berth, but they cannot afford to stumble in the next 48 hours.
In other words, the pressure will be squarely on the Blues’ shoulders Friday night when they visit the Chicago Blackhawks at the United Center.
St. Louis trails Colorado by one point for the second wild-card spot with a game in hand after the Avalanche lost at San Jose 4-2 on Thursday. The clubs meet Saturday in Denver with a victory by the Blues over the Avalanche putting them in the playoffs. There could be other scenarios for St. Louis to reach the postseason pending Friday’s result in Chicago.
The Blackhawks (33-37-10) already have been eliminated from playoff contention for the first time in a decade. But it is safe to assume that a pride-filled Chicago roster — not to mention a raucous crowd — is energized at the possibility of crushing the postseason hopes of its longtime division rival.
“It’d be nice to see them miss the playoffs,” Blackhawks right winger Patrick Kane said to the Chicago Sun-Times this week. “So it’d be nice to have a hand in that.”
The animosity was apparent Wednesday night as Chicago stormed back from a two-goal deficit for a 4-3 victory over St. Louis. Defenseman Duncan Keith scored in the final seconds to complete the comeback and weaken the Blues’ playoff chances.
St. Louis goaltender Jake Allen took the blame for the loss. Other Blues players said nerves might have played a role.
“If you’re going to play nervous, then you better play smart,” St. Louis coach Mike Yeo said to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The team vowed to perform better on the back end of its home-and-home series with Chicago.
“It (stinks), but at the end of the day, we have to stay positive,” Blues center Brayden Schenn said. “Two-game winning streak here to get into the postseason.”
Allen is expected to get another chance in net Friday for St. Louis. The 27-year-old is 27-24-3 with a 2.74 goals-against average and .906 save percentage in 58 games (55 starts) on the season. He is winless in his last four contests.
In 14 career games against Chicago, Allen is 8-5-1 with a 2.53 GAA and .915 save percentage.
The Blackhawks most likely will counter in net with Jean-Francois Berube Authentic Andy Dalton Jersey , who made 31 saves during Wednesday’s victory. Berube is 3-5-1 with a 3.84 GAA and .893 save percentage on the season. He has made three career appearances against the Blues (1-0-1, 3.39 GAA, .901 save percentage).
The game could mark the final appearance at the United Center for Blackhawks forward Patrick Sharp, whose contract expires at the end of the season. The 36-year-old has avoided specifics when asked about his future plans. He won three Stanley Cup championships with Chicago in 2010, 2013 and 2015, and has scored 249 goals in 747 games with the franchise.
Although Sharp’s future is up in the air, coach Joel Quenneville and general manager Stan Bowman definitely will be back. Team president John McDonough announced Thursday that he planned to retain both despite missing the playoffs.
“We might have to reinvent ourselves a little bit,” McDonough said to The Athletic. “We might have to be a little bit creative. We might have to dial it up a little bit more. But I’m confident this is a group that’s going to do it. I’m certainly disappointed where we are right now.”
Nicklas Backstrom dreamed about the road less traveled.Driving down Constitution Avenue on his way to each home game since his NHL debut in 2007, he imagined the street lined with overjoyed Washington Capitals fans.
”It always popped up in my head that one time we’re going to have a parade here, and finally that day is here Cheap Darius Leonard Jersey ,” Backstrom said.
It all becomes reality Tuesday when Backstrom and the Stanley Cup-champion Capitals give the city its first parade for a major pro sports team since the NFL’s Redskins in 1992. The parade is 26 years in the making for Washington sports fans who endured long, lean years of heartbreak.
”I don’t think anyone doubted what this city would do,” longtime Nationals infielder Ryan Zimmerman said. ”It’s just a matter of getting there and having the ability to do it. They definitely held up their end of the bargain.”
Tens of thousands gathered for viewing parties of road playoff games on the way to the Capitals’ first championship since beginning play in 1974. They camped out on the streets to watch on giant video screens – the kinds of scenes more germane to presidential inaugurations in this town than sporting events.
”I thought it was really cool when we were even at home and everyone was outside and going nuts and they would show that right after we would score a goal,” defenseman John Carlson said. ”I think that was probably one of the coolest moments of the playoffs for me and just seeing the support. … I think we deserve it, and so do the fans.”
It has been a long time coming. Since the Redskins won the Super Bowl in January 1992, the 1998 Capitals were the only Washington team in the NHL, NBA, NFL or Major League Baseball to reach a league semifinal until this spring, a drought of 74 combined seasons without a championship.
When the Capitals took the Cup into the Nationals’ clubhouse on Saturday, coach Barry Trotz wanted players to know: ”There’s no curse or anything. It’s all gone.” All they had to do to know that was look around the past two months to see the doubt being chipped away.
Nationals manager Davey Martinez Darius Leonard Colts Jersey , who texted with Trotz throughout the run, got his first real taste of Washington sports in the playoffs with the Chicago Cubs last year when he came out of the dugout seeing 50,000 fans in red and couldn’t hear himself think because it was so loud.
”Right then and there I said, `Hey, these people, they’re in, they love it,”’ Martinez recalled. ”This is exciting. And the city then rallied this year around the Caps. I get it. It was awesome. It was good for the city. Good for us. I know our boys were all in, they were excited about everything. I told them yesterday, `Let’s just keep it rolling. The city’s all-in.”’
Washington isn’t a city accustomed to being all-in because of the scars of so many playoff failures over the years. Longtime Capitals season-ticket holder Jimmy Patterson said fans became reluctant to get together to watch games because the mood at the end of the night wasn’t something anyone wanted to endure in a group setting.
That’s part of what made the public gatherings for Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final and throughout the Stanley Cup Final so remarkable. Exorcising franchise-long demons by beating the Pittsburgh Penguins in the second round seemed to free fans to actually enjoy themselves.
”It showed what they were capable of and shows if you get to that level Vontaze Burfict Bengals Jersey , they’re going to match it or even step it up a little bit more than the actual players,” Zimmerman said.
Fans celebrating the Capitals beating the Penguins led ESPN’s Michael Wilbon – a former Washington Post columnist – to call D.C. a ”minor league sports town.” It’s not the first knock on Washington, though 14 years of playing baseball in the city has given Zimmerman some clarity on explaining that it’s not Boston, Chicago, New York or Philadelphia, and he doesn’t think it has to be.
”This is such an interesting city because not many people are from here, so it’s hard to be a Boston or a Chicago,” Zimmerman said. ”That’s a generational sports town. So it’s nothing against (Washington). They shouldn’t be like that. They have no reason to be like that.
”A lot of these people move here for work in their early to mid-20s or come here even later than that and they adopt a team. This is what happens nowadays: Everyone compares everything. Just let it be. Let it be what it is. We have great fans and obviously if you make the playoffs and get to a Stanley Cup finals, you have really great fans just like any city would.”
Thousands of fans are expected to watch the parade, from 17th to 7th on Constitution. Trotz has been thinking about something like this since he arrived in 2014.
”You start thinking about Billy Price Youth Jersey , `Well, what would it mean?’ and then you think about a possible parade on one of the most famous streets in all the world, really, and it’s sort of now coming into play,” Trotz said. ”It’s going to come true.”
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