Elliott + Oshie + Team Effort = Simple Math For Blues Win Over Canucks

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win a bet about using math in a headline. Clever, effective and SEO-friendly? Oh, SBN, I think this means our relationship is back... ON!

Quick! To the bulletpoints!

• I don't care who the number one goalie is and I don't care who has a fragile ego and I don't care who is making more money. The guy who wins, plays. Brian Elliott is 5-1 this year and, as I realized as I was putting together the NHL Leaders statistics for the GT paper today, Elliott was fourth in the NHL in GAA at 1.67 and fifth in the league in save percentage at 94.2%. Keep it up and I promise I'll stop thinking "Billy Elliott" every time I want to think "Brian Elliott."
• My wife had a theory for years that it would be annoying to opposing goalies if the crowd would just chant what we all want to chant at goaltenders anyway: no matter who is in net, the St. Louis crowd should yell, "Beeelllllll-Foooooour!" It would be hard to get a crowd behind that, but I do think it would be funny. Proving that my daughter is her mother's child, she made up her own chant tonight as the crowd was yelling at Roberto Luongo.  It went, "Luuuuuonnn-goooo, Where aaaaare  yooooou?" Bizarre, still funny.
• On the way to the rink tonight, I was complaining about T.J. Oshie. I think I said something along the lines of, "Oshie hasn't been very good. Just one goal so far is not enough. Has that kid ever scored a hat trick in his career?" You are welcome, young man. Maybe I should badmouth more players on the way to the rink because No. 74's two goals and an assists were the difference tonight, obviously. And honestly, he could have had two or three more points tonight had a little more luck been on his side.
• The Blues beat Vancouver tonight because of good goaltending and a great performance by Oshie, for sure, but most important was the team game played in the defensive zone. I thought the whole team did a great job of limiting good offensive chances by the Canucks, especially those creepy Sedin brothers. Most of the Canucks' chances came from bad angles and from distance and the Blues did an excellent job of limiting second and third chances all night. Now if they can just play every team like they have Sedin twins on the other side and pay great attention in their own zone, we'll be in business this year.
• Speaking of the Sedins, I told Brad Lee (who hates the Cardinals now too, if you haven't been on Twitter today) that for the next Canucks game we should run a Ginger Facts half-page story. I think it would go something like this: "Gingers tend to have more sensitive teeth than the average populace. Ergo, Henrik and Daniel Sedin probably hate cold milk." I feel like this idea is going places, please help out in the comments.

Back at in in Minnehaha tomorrow, so let's all plan to meet back here tomorrow, shall we?