Blues at Wild
The St. Louis Blues have been among the top road teams in the league over the past few seasons but they have been unable to carry that success over to the playoffs. St. Louis will look to avoid a 10th consecutive postseason defeat away from home when it faces the Minnesota Wild on Wednesday in Game 4 of the Western Conference first-round playoff series.
Minnesota dominated the visiting Blues in a 3-0 shutout on Monday night to take a 2-1 edge in the best-of-seven series, but St. Louis coach Ken Hitchcock isn't pressing the panic button despite his team's road struggles. "We came here to win a hockey game," Hitchcock said. "We win the game (Wednesday), we've got home ice." The Wild, who went 5-0-1 at home in last season's playoffs, limited the Central Division champions to only 17 shots in Game 3. Devan Dubnyk recorded the third postseason shutout in franchise history and became the first netminder to blank an opponent in this season's playoffs.
TV: 9:30 p.m. ET, NBC Sports, RSN, TVA3, FSN Midwest (St. Louis), FSN North (Minnesota)
ABOUT THE BLUES: Hitchcock hinted there could be changes to the lineup after Monday's lackluster performance, but he has no issues with the play of rookie Jake Allen, who has started all three games in net. "The opposition's scored, what, five goals? Our goalie's been excellent," Hitchcock said. "They've got five goals when you count the ones with the goalie in the net; that's not much. ... Any coach in the world would take five goals against right now after three games." Vladimir Tarasenko, St. Louis' leading scorer during the regular season, had a hat trick to spark a 4-1 victory in Game 2 but has not registered a shot on goal in either loss.
ABOUT THE WILD: Home ice has allowed Minnesota coach Mike Yeo to play the matchups and he has opted to send out his top line of Jason Pominville, Zach Parise and Mikael Granlund against St. Louis' No. 1 unit. Each of the Wild's trio collected two points in Game 3, including second-period goals by Pominville and Parise, while bottling up Tarasenko and linemates Alexander Steen and Jori Lehtera, holding them to a combined two shots. “I wasn’t too excited about the way our first two games went in St. Louis,” Parise said. “I thought we could do a lot better. ... The three of us wanted to have a better performance than we had in St. Louis.”
OVERTIME
1. Dubnyk record his first shutout since Feb. 20 - he had five in his first 16 starts after he was acquired from Arizona in mid-January.
2. The Blues have lost 17 of their last 19 road playoff games.
3. Pominville has eight career multi-point games in his career while Parise extended his franchise record with his 13th playoff assist.