The St. Louis Blues and the Colorado Avalanche meet in game five of their best-of-seven Western Conference semi-final in NHL action from the Ball Arena on Wednesday.

The St. Louis Blues will try to keep their season alive after a 6-3 loss to the Avs in game four to fall behind 3-1 in the series. David Perron leads the Blues in scoring with 13 points including a team-high 9 goals and 4 assists while Ryan O’Reilly has 12 points with 7 goals and 5 apples. Pavel Buchnevich has 9 points with 8 assists while Jordan Kyrou and Vladimir Tarasenko each have 7 points with 5 goals and a pair of 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 1-4 with an .884 save percentage and a 3.76 GAA this postseason.

The Colorado Avalanche will look to complete the series win and push on to the conference finals after their win over the Blues last time out. Cale Makar has a team-high 12 points with 3 goals and a team-high 9 assists while Gabriel Landeskog, Nazem Kadri and Mikko Rantanen each have 10 points with Landeskog and Kadri each logging 5 goals and 5 assists while Rantanen has 9 assists. Nathan MacKinnon has 9 points with 5 goals and 4 assists as well this postseason. Darcy Kuemper is 5-1 so far in the postseason, posting a .917 save percentage and a 2.14 GAA while Pavel Francouz is also 2-0 with a .902 save percentage and a 2.97 GAA so far in the postseason.

I get the case to be made for the Avs here, as the Blues haven’t really been able to adjust enough with Ville Husso in net in place of Jordan Binnington. However, this is a steep rpice to lay with St. Louis’ season on the line. This is a veteran team that’s going to battle hard with all the chips in the middle of the table and I just think that in this spot, you have to side with the Blues to at least keep this one close on the +1.5 pick line if they don’t win outright.