The Colorado Avalanche and the St. Louis Blues meet in NHL action from the Enterprise Center on Monday night.
The Colorado Avalanche will try to take a 3-1 series lead going back home for game five after taking a 2-1 series lead with a 5-2 win over St. Louis last time out. Cale Makar has a team-high 11 points with 3 goals and a team-high 9 assists while Gabriel Landeskog has 10 points and Nathan MacKinnon has 0 points with MacKinnon logging a team-high 5 goals and Landeskog split between 5 goals and 5 assists. Mikko Rantanen has 9 assists as well this postseason. Darcy Kuemper is 4-1 so far in the postseason, posting a .926 save percentage and a 1.99 GAA while Pavel Francouz is also 2-0 with a .902 save percentage and a 2.97 GAA so far in the postseason.
The St. Louis Blues will try to make this a best-of-three series after their loss to the Avs in game three. Ryan O’Reilly leads the Blues with 12 points including a team-high 7 goals with 5 assists while David Perron is right behind with 11 points including 7 goals of his own and 4 assists. Vladimir Tarasenko and Pavel Buchnevich each have 7 points with Tarasenko logging 5 goals while Buchnevich has 7 assists. Ville Husso will be the goaltender for the rest of the second round after Jordan Binnington sustained an injury in game three and Husso is 1-3 with an .891 save percentage and a 3.38 GAA this postseason.
Colorado is 6-1 in their last 7 games against a team with a winning record and 15-3 in their last 18 Monday games while the over is 17-8 in their last 25 playoff games as a favorite. St. Louis is 8-3 in their last 11 home games and 17-7 in their last 24 games overall while the over is 23-8-2 in their last 33 games as a home underdog.
I get the reasoning for backing either team in this one, but I’m looking at the under here. I expect this to be a high-tension game with St. Louis not wanting to go back to Colorado down 3-1 in the series while the Avs won’t want to let St. louis back into the series and all of a sudden make this a best-of-three series. All in all, I expect this to be a 3-2 game whichever way you have it going as game three would’ve been had it not been for a couple of late markers. Give me the under here.