Hockey Future has an interesting article up on who they rank as the best undrafted prospects in college hockey.  Now, I don't see a lot of East Coast hockey, but of the Western contingent there are two I wouldn't mind seeing the Blues sign:

Chay Genoway, D, 23
Senior, University of North Dakota

Genoway got his final year at North Dakota off to a terrific start, but it would all come to a halt on Nov. 13. when a hit by Aaron Marvin (CGY) forced Genoway out of the lineup indefinitely.

The Morden, MB native played in nine games to date and posted 10 points (four goals, six assists). All of his goals came on the power play.

Genoway is an offensive defenseman with great hands and on-ice presence. He is a fluid skater with good speed. He quarterbacks the power play with confidence and his puck skills are outstanding. What Genoway lacks in size (5’9/174), he more than makes up for in his leadership and work ethic. He is a tireless worker and leads by example. On a young Fighting Sioux team, Genoway has been invaluable in guiding North Dakota to another great season in the WCHA.

Genoway was off to arguably his best start of his collegiate career. An All-American West Second team selection last season, Genoway may have been on his way to another and All-American season were it not for his injury.

Continue reading this post »

Rookie forward Lars Eller has been red-hot in the month of March, with four goals and nine points in Peoria's five games played this month. Eller's personal hot streak, however, could not help the Rivermen to a road win last night.

Veteran Pascal Pelletier tallied a goal and an assist, and Eller assisted on both Peoria goals, but Aaron Gagnon's 18th goal of the season early in the third was the difference in a 3-2 win for the Texas Stars before 3,909 fans at the Cedar Park Center in suburban Austin.

Peoria's high-octane power play, ranked second in the AHL (63/302, 20.9%), was not firing on all cylinders last night, with only Pelletier's goal at 5:21 of the second period to show for seven opportunities with the man advantage.

LINK to the official game sheet from the AHL website.

Joe Fallon, making his second start for Peoria since coming over from the Chicago organization, made 20 saves in the loss. The Rivermen (30-27-2-6) continue their Texas road trip on Friday night with a 7:35 pm CST start at the Toyota Center in Houston vs. the Aeros (29-28-6-2).

Rick Wamsley's club is in sixth place in the AHL West Division, one point behind fifth-place San Antonio with a game in hand, and trailing Milwaukee (35-23-1-6) by nine points for the last playoff spot in the Western Conference. The Admirals pulled further away from the Rivermen with a 5-1 home win over Lake Erie last night, and play next on Saturday at home vs. the Toronto Marlies.

Tonight, Andy Mac, Jackman, and their mostly young team take on a team from the other conference in a game with playoff implications.... And the Blues play, too!

OK, I cheated a little bit there, but our friend Dominik's team has a Tim Jackman, and an Andrew MacDonald (ours is a McDonald, but hey .... who's counting). And like the Blues, the Isles are trying to compete every night now while, at the same time, developing their youth for better things ahead. The Isles are all but eliminated from playoff contention, but that is NOT true for the Blues. The playoffs begin now, for all intents and purposes. Every game, regardless of the opponent, counts towards our standings. We cannot rely on help from around the league. That's not enough. We cannot play 45ish minutes of solid hockey. That's not enough. We cannot afford to overlook a likely-lottery-pick team .... that's not enough.

Don't let the record fool you. There's plenty of fight in this New York Islander squad. Their young guns, like John Tavares, Kyle Okposo, Josh Bailey, and MacDonald have more than enough talent to compete with our youngsters. And don't doubt for a second that Doug Weight is going to be uber-motivated for tonight. Their record in the last 10 games is 3-7-0 ... but that includes a win over a tough Chicago team and 4 losses that were either by 1-goal or 1-goal and an ENG. They gave Philly a tough game Tuesday, until the trips to the box cost them the game. These close games are building up the pressure on the team  - they've come close to winning, but just didn't have...

Enough/ Gravity Kills.

It's hard to get your hate on for this game - it's the Islanders for cryin' out loud! Whatever difficulty we have, though, is immaterial. We need our boys to get back on the winning track again, and it must begin tonight. Hopefully, the loss in Colorado will allow the Blues to keep focus. If we were still on a long winning streak, this could be a "trap" game. Since we don't have that streak running anymore, we can avoid that.

Further Reading:

Lighthouse Hockey

Blues vs Islanders coverage

This is also your pregame pre-party. Since this is on the East Coast, the puck drops early - 6:00 PM St Louis time. Until then, meet here, bitch about early starts, and snicker about a team owned by a Wang, and GM'd by a Garth.

Party On! And LGB!

-CrossCheckRaise

Prospect forward Andrew Sackrison (Minnesota State), and defense prospect Cade Fairchild (Minnesota), will take part in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association playoffs this coming weekend.

No. 3 seed St. Cloud State (20-11-5) will take on No. 8 seed Minnesota State (15-18-3) for the second straight weekend, hosting the Mavericks at the National Hockey Center (5,371) on Friday, Saturday and Sunday (if necessary) at 7:07 pm CT each evening. The No. 7-ranked Huskies are 0-1-1 vs the Mavericks this season, after dropping a 4-2 decision in Mankato last Friday (March 5) and then earning a 2-2 (ot) tie last Saturday (March 6) in St. Cloud.

Longtime rivals North Dakota and Minnesota will hook-up in first round WCHA playoff action at Ralph Engelstad Arena (11,634) in Grand Forks, with Friday's opener set for 7:37 pm CT, Saturday’s contest at 7:07 pm CT, and a potential third game on Sunday at 7:07 pm CT. The No. 5-ranked Fighting Sioux (20-11-5), sporting a current nation’s best seven-game winning streak, and the Golden Gophers (17-17-2) split their four-game regular season series 1-1-2. On the opening weekend of the 2009-10 conference schedule, Oct. 16-17, host North Dakota won 4-0 and tied 3-3 (ot) to take three points from UM. Then on Jan. 15-16 in Minneapolis, the two clubs tied 3-3 (ot) in game one before the Gophers captured a 5-1 triumph in game two. Both teams scored 11 goals and yielded 11 in the series.

Minnesota forward Jay Barriball, acquired by the Blues in the Bill Guerin trade with San Jose two seasons ago, remains sidelined for the Gophers due to a knee injury suffered in practice last November.

LINK to story at WCHA website.

After being on the short end of a 5-1 score late in the second period at the AT&T Center in San Antonio, the Peoria Rivermen mounted a four-goal comeback before losing a heartbreaker in OT to the Rampage last night.

Peoria starter Ben Bishop was pulled at 9:09 of the second period after allowing four goals on 24 shots. Newly-acquired Joe Fallon surrendered a goal 1:33 after entering in relief of Bishop, but stymied the Rampage during Peoria's furious comeback.

Lars Eller (13), Jonas Junland (13), Pascal Pelletier (12), Barry Tallackson (17) and Julian Talbot (15) each scored for the Rivermen. Pelletier added a pair of assists, as did Nick Drazenovic, while rookie Brett Sonne chipped in three helpers. Fallon stopped 22 of 24 shots in 32:12 of relief work, but toook the loss in OT.

LINK to game sheet at AHL website.

If you are anything like me, you are going crazy every single night watching the scoreboard and watching the games the matter to the Blues and our slim chances of making another improbable playoff run. 

There are a bunch of games tonight that could mess with our chances.  We would like to see:

• ATL over NSH
• CGY over DET (in regulation)
• FLA over MIN
• CBJ over ANA

We can get a little help from the Eastern Conference tonight.  We dont need to see any 3 point games between the all Western conference teams.  We still control our own destiny

Im bored as hell and need to stall before i write an english paper thats due tomorrow and havent started.  So if anyone else wants to stay up, talk hockey, kill time til we finally play again on Thurs., and scoreboard watch with me, this is the place to do it.  Now go do this shit!!! LGB and as always FUCK DETROIT

I'm just gonna point his out before anyone else does.  If I grew a beard I would BE St. Louis Globe-Democrat writer George Csolak:

George:

Hockey Prof:

All I can say is, George, you are a handsome man. Who's your daddy?

The Clarkson University (Potsdam, NY) Golden Knights, and Blues' prospect Paul Karpowich ended a valiant postseason run in ECAC play yesterday, coming up on the short end of a 3-2 decision.

The Knights (9-24-4) lost game three of their first-round series against St. Lawrence University (17-14-7), with all three games played on the Saints' home ice in Canton, NY, and all three games decided by a single goal.

St. Lawrence won game one on Friday, Mar. 5, by a 3-2 score in OT, but Karpowich and the Knights came from behind on Saturday, Mar. 6 to win 4-3, again in overtime, setting up Sunday's do-or-die showdown.

Karpowich was outstanding in the three games of the series, playing all 197 minutes and allowing nine goals on 117 total shots against for a 2.71 GAA and 92.3% save percentage in postseason.

For the year, Karpowich finishes with a stat line of 1744 minutes played in 31 games, 101 goals against on 991 shots faced for a 3.48 goals-against average and an 89.8% save percentage. Karpowich's won-lost record was 8-19-4.

LINK to story at Clarkson University men's hockey website, including a sweet photo of Karpowich in action...

I didn't take long for newly-acquired goaltender Joe Fallon to make an impact on the Peoria Rivermen roster.

In his first start since joining the Blues' organization at the trade deadline last week, the 6' 3, 205-pound native of Bemidji, MN stopped 29 of 31 Milwaukee Admiral shots in a matinee game Sunday afternoon to lead Peoria to a 4-2 victory.

First-year man Brett Sonne scored his 10th goal of the year on the power play at 4:41 of the first period to start things off, and the Rivermen never looked back. Lars Eller added his 12th of the year later in the period, and veteran Cam Paddock closed out the scoring for Peoria with two third-period tallies, including an empty-netter at 18:56 to seal the win.

LINK to game sheet at the American Hockey League website.

The other night, I got curious as to how our remaining schedule compared to the other teams that are competing for playoff spots. I created a little spreadsheet, and took a look. This is what I came up with.

First, I took the current 7th through 14th seeds. Although the real competition is between 8th and 13th, I wanted to expand a little to gather more data. The current standings look like this:

• 7th NAS 75 pts
• 8th DET 72 pts
• 9th CGY 71 pts
• 10th STL 69 pts
• 11th DAL 68 pts
• 12th MIN 67 pts
• 13th ANA 67 pts

• 14th CBJ 61 pts

These are the "contenders". These are the schedules that I've compared, and discovered the following:

MIN has 19 games remaining on their schedule. STL and CBJ have 17 games left. Everyone else has 18.

DET controls their own fate the most; of the 18 games left on their schedule, 10 are against fellow contenders. The team that needs the most help from other teams is DAL, they only play other contenders 5 times.

Things are pretty even on Home/Away games. CGY has the most, playing 11 of 18 on the road. ANA only plays 7 on the road.

I also looked at who is playing the current division leaders for a measure of who had the toughest schedule ahead. In the cases where  there is a tie, I counted both teams. Right now, that would be PIT, BUF, OTT, WAS, CHI, VAN, COL, and SJ. The team with the toughest schedule is probably CGY. Of the 18 games left, 9 are against division leaders. DAL is right behind with 8. At the opposite end of the spectrum is NAS. Already ahead of the pack, they also only play division leaders twice for the remainder of the schedule.

This is how STL fared:

17 Games Remaining

9 Games Against Contenders

10 Games on the Road

3 Games against Division Leaders (once more against COL, and CHI twice)

I'm not sure what you can project out of all of this. However, when some teams make the cut, and the others don't, I'll bet that these are some of the reasons why that did or didn't happen.

-CrossCheckRaise