.......

13. The GMs vote for the Vezina. What are they going to do with the St. Louis goaltenders? As of Monday morning, the Blues are 17 goals better than second-place Los Angeles with a true tandem of Jaroslav Halak (43 appearances) and Brian Elliott (35). They've got 14 shutouts between them, most in the NHL since Tony Esposito's 15 in 1969-70. The last shared victory was 1981 (Richard Sevigny, Denis Herron, Michel Larocque), as the league created the Jennings Trophy to eliminate this phenomenon.

14. The last goalie to win the Vezina with fewer than 50 appearances was Patrick Roy in 1989 (48). Saw some suggestions on Twitter that Elliott should win it, after he whitewashed Phoenix for his eighth shutout of the year. Tough thing is: he won't play 40 games. How many goalies have won the Vezina without playing at least 40? Zero - unless it was shared. (Bill Durnan was closest, hitting that exact number in 1945-46. Of course, it was a 50-game season then.)

15. The Blue with the best chance for individual hardware is probably David Backes (Selke, will get my vote). One opposing exec recently pointed out how the captain plays all three forward positions extremely well. Another criminally overshadowed player is Alex Pietrangelo, but it's going to be tough to get Norris votes against Erik Karlsson, Shea Weber and Zdeno Chara.

16. Last Thursday, Pietrangelo played a ridiculous 4:11 of the five-minute overtime in Los Angeles. His last shift (which included a power play) was 2:19. Maybe that's why he wears 27 - a tribute to Alex Kovalev's shift lengths.

...

Whole thing here

St. Louis Blues, Western Conference leaders, are making Ken Hitchcock look like a prophet

With Extra Bonus Quoting of Our Very Own Brad Lee. My Comment:

Brad Lee is correct, when this team plays the game the way they want to play it, there isn't a team in the NHL that can beat them 4 out of 7. They can beat themselves (and have at times), and they won't win them all, but they'll win more than they lose. Look at the last 8 games: a home loss to the Bruins (the Bruins are a great team and took the Blues off their game plan), 5-1 on a six game road trip, the loss to Vancouver being a scoreless tie til midway thru the 3rd period on the second game of a back-to-back. This team is built the way I believe a winning team should be built; from the goal line out. They never let up and they never quit. I've been a Blues fan since 1970, and this team has more upside than any team I can remember, including the 1990-91 squad or the President's Trophy team. I'm trying to keep my enthusiasm down, because the Note has broken my heart many times in the past and I'm prepared for that to happen again, but I am actually beginning to hope that my fondest dream, Just One Cup Before I Die, may come true someday.

My lunchtime noodling:  Blues regular season results:

2002-03    41-24-11-06    99pts    5th

2003-04    39-30-11-02    91        7th

2004-05    April Fool!

2005-06    21-46-15        57        15th

2006-07    34-35-13        81        10th

2007-08    33-36-13        79        14th

2008-09    41-31-10        92        6th

2009-10    40-32-10        90        9th

2010-11    38-33-11*       87*      11th*  

*assuming a win over the Preds Saturday

What can we learn from this?  The Blues were on their way down BEFORE the lockout, and the difference between making the playoffs and not making the playoffs isn't so much the number of wins as it is keeping the number of regulation losses under 30.