Blues lucky to be tied with Sharks in conference final

The St. Louis Blues aren’t delusional.

They know, to a man, that their performance in Game 2 of the Western Conference Final earned them that 4-0 loss to the San Jose Sharks on Tuesday night. And they know, to a man, that they were fortunate to leave Game 1 with a victory after the Sharks gradually took over that game.

This could be an 0-2 hole, headed to the Shark Tank. The Blues know this.

“We weren’t our best. Games 1 and 2, we feel didn’t really go our way. But we’re leaving here 1-1,” said forward Scottie Upshall.

Blues coach Ken Hitchcock said that the Sharks have been on their game for the last five games, including the first two of this series.

“They got their A-game going right now. We’ve played two B-games. I think at times that we’ve been fortunate that it’s been 1-1. We’ll take 1-1 right now with the way we’ve played,” he said. “We have another level. We’ve seen it. But it hasn’t come out at home as much as it has in other buildings.”

The Blues are now 4-5 on home ice in the playoffs. The Sharks are 5-1 at the Shark Tank this postseason, and haven’t allowed more than two goals to an opponent on home ice in those six games.

So what undid the Blues in Game 2?

Frustration, for one, not only in untimely penalties but in the way the Sharks defended the Blues.

“We let frustration creep in at certain points in the game. That can’t happen,” said forward Alex Steen.

But Hitchcock said it was a matter of the Blues wilting under the pressure from the Sharks.

"I think when either team pressures the other team into mistakes, we manage the puck the right way, we're a very good team.  When we manage it improperly, we're not very good. We don't have the foot speed of other teams. But what we have is the collective mindset to allow us to manage the puck properly,” he said.

“When we don't manage it, a lot of cases it's based on puck support.  When we don't skate to support, we don't manage it properly, we end up turning it over and feeding the engine of the other team. That's what we did tonight. We turned it over, fed their engine, had it stuck in our zone.”

And you never want to feed the Sharks’ engine.

The Blues, to a man, believe they have levels they haven’t hit yet in this series. That the Sharks haven’t seen their best.

That might be true, but so is this: San Jose proved in Game 2 that you can’t hope that their power play will flounder while taking idiotic penalties; that if you thought Martin Jones would be a liability because the Blues snuck a shaky one by him in Game 1, they can play dominating defense in front of him; and that the Sharks can take over a game to the point where the only sounds you heard in St. Louis at the end of the 4-0 loss were apathy, boredom and a few random jeers.

It’s on the Blues to figure out how to match that effort.

“We were able to not play our best and win a game. We could have learned a lesson in a win. Instead we have to learn a lesson in a loss,” said captain David Backes.

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Greg Wyshynski is a writer for Yahoo Sports. Contact him at puckdaddyblog@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter. His book, TAKE YOUR EYE OFF THE PUCK, is available on Amazon and wherever books are sold.

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