Stars at Blues Round 2, Game 7 Preview: Will the Blues build on their game six momentum?

After two less than ideal performances in games four and five of the series, the Blues blew their Game Six curse wide open on Sunday afternoon. They were able to exploit Dallas’ weaknesses (and David Perron was able to exploit John Klingberg’s bad backchecking) to send the series back to St. Louis for a game seven.

Game sevens are either the greatest thing in all of sports or the most stressful event known to mankind. A lot of this perspective depends on if your team is a participant in a game seven or not. The Blues have seen both game seven heroics and duds in the past, but more recent history has seen the heroic side of the coin. Three years ago, in 2016, the Blues took out the Dallas Stars 6-1 in Dallas to move on to the Western Conference Final. Tonight they could do the same on home ice.

For whatever reason, the Blues’ play on home ice this postseason has left a lot to be desired - they’re 2-4 and have laid a couple of massive eggs. They’ve looked out of sync and out of sorts, but that ended Sunday afternoon. More specifically, that ended Sunday afternoon when this happened:

Sammy Blais scored his first playoff goal nearly immediately afterward, and that was all she wrote for Ben Bishop. Obviously there’s concern when a goalie gets pegged like that, but on a Colton Parayko slapshot? It’s a minor miracle there’s still a collarbone left.

Bishop should be in net tonight:

This raises the question of is he good or is he “playoff good?” If he shows even limited mobility, the Blues need to shoot high to the glove side on every single shot. Maybe this can help them finally solve Dallas’ excellent penalty kill.

Game seven should be a treat, but the momentum’s on the Blues’ side. Can they take advantage of it and a very loud Enterprise Center crowd?

Hopefully we’ll have a series preview instead of a series post-mortem up soon here on Game Time.