A year ago, the second seeded St. Louis Blues saw their Stanley Cup aspirations fall in the second round against the eighth seed Los Angeles Kings. The Blues barely put up a fight; in fact the team was swept in the serious as LA ran off to its first ever Stanley Cup. Now the team gets a chance to exact vengeance when the two sides meet Tuesday.
The Kings made very few changes in the offseason, but their defense corps will look very different from the group that led the team to a Stanley Cup. The pairings of Rob Scuderi and Drew Doughty, Willie Mitchell and Slava Voynov and Alec Martinez and Matt Greene were the Stanley Cup winners but this year's core includes Jake Muzzin, Keaton Ellerby and Robyn Regehr. Mitchell and Greene have been out with injury.
"I don't think it's too different," Doughty noted. "We're obviously a little younger, now with Greener out, too. Last year I think Mitchie - not that he got replaced - but Reg (Robyn Regehr) is kind of the same player as him in ways. So I think we're pretty similar. We're just younger. We've still got good movement on our third pairing. We've got good skaters, good puck movers, and then we've got guys who'd be physical, too. I think we look pretty much the same."
"We're always looking at areas that we can improve. We're always looking at areas that maybe we're doing a good job and we want to continue to do that. There's always some key things that you're doing in order to get the job done out there," added newcomer Regehr. "You're always working together and communicating and watching some video here and there, too, that everything is going the way it should be, or that you're looking at things that you need to fix because maybe you don't feel that you're as effective as you can be out there."
Brian Elliott will get the start for the Blues in goal and has been riding a hot streak for the last month of the season. "He's back playing the way he did all of last year," Coach Ken Hitchcock said in an interview the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "He was very good when [Jaroslav Halak] got hurt in the playoffs and then he had the inner-ear infection and didn't really play up to par until the last game when he was healthy. I just like his frame of mind. I like his disposition. He's a confident guy right now and we're going to need him."
Predictions: St. Louis wins the first game 3-2.
Start Time: 8 PM EST
TV: CNBC
Read the Recap HERE.
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