Kraken @ St. Louis PREVIEW: Morning Blues

The Need To Knows

• The Time: 10am PT
• The Place: Enterprise Center, St. Louis, Missouri
• Place to Watch: TNT/SportsNet+
• Place to Listen: KJR 93.3-FM, ESPN101 (101.1 FM) in St. Louis
• An Opposing Viewpoint: Blue Note Hockey

Know Your Enemy

• The Blues are the Western Conference 9th seed, which is unfortunate for playoff positioning because only 8 teams make the playoffs in each conference. The Blues sit in the “sadness” area where they aren’t making the postseason and don’t have a bad enough record to get a realistic shot at a high draft pick.
• If you want interesting players to watch for on the Blues, center Robert Thomas is the chic pick for “most underrated player in the league” these days. Goalie Jordan Binnington is having a bit of a bounceback year after having a down season last year.
• St. Louis is where we got the ice cream cone, which became popular when introduced at the 1904 World’s Fair.
• The Gateway Arch is as wide as it is tall.

The Goal Song

The Blues really fumbled the bag on this one. Their goal song starts out with the organist playing “When the Saints Go Marching In” (well, when the Blues go marching in) and then a custom song recorded by St. Louis band The Urge. This is a great start! Local artist recording an original song? How is any of this bad?

Here’s the goal song.

The team’s name is a genre of music and then their goal song does not incorporate that genre of music. The Predators’ stinger when they kill a penalty has more blue notes in it than the entirety of the Blues goal song. We live in a society and this is not okay.

The Urge is a good band, but would it kill them to record a goal song with a flattened fifth every now and again? That’s all I’m asking here.

Game Preview

First of all, the game is being played at a deeply unnatural time. 10am hockey is an affront to decency and all that we know is good in the world.

It’s not fun, but the absolute best thing for Seattle is to lose their remaining games in regulation. Getting a better draft pick matters a lot in this draft, and it also increases their lottery odds to get the grand prize of the draft, Macklin Celebrini.

The kids have left the nest and are back in Coachella Valley. One player we will not see this morning or the rest of the season is Vince Dunn, who did not make the road trip with the team.

Joey Daccord should start today, given that Grubauer started yesterday.

That’s pretty much what’s at stake here. Play hockey, hopefully nobody gets hurt, evaluate some pieces for next season, and above all else, lose the game.

(Keep calm and post Zoidberg when we…lose?)