After six games of this very evenly matched series between the St. Louis Blues and Dallas Stars the teams are tied at 3-3. Game 7 will take place at the Enterprise Center in St. Louis on Tuesday night with the winner advancing to the conference finals to face the Colorado\/San Jose winner. The Stars won Games 4 and 5 and were in a position to advance with a Game 6 win but St. Louis prevailed 4-1 to even it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The big storyline that came out of Game 6 was the fitness of Dallas goalie Ben Bishop. Bishop was struck in the shoulder by a shot from Blues’ defenseman Colton Parayko. He dropped immediately to the ice but play continued and St. Louis managed to score a goal. There was a minor bit of controversy about play not stopping immediately but it was all by the book–the NHL rule book:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhen a player is injured so that he cannot continue to play or go to his bench, the play shall not be stopped until the injured player\u2019s team has secured control of the puck. If the player\u2019s team is in control of the puck at the time of injury, play shall be stopped immediately unless his team is in a scoring position.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Game officials have the ability to stop play ‘at their discretion’ due to a serious injury but Bishop’s issue didn’t reach that threshold. It is admittedly an arbitrary criteria but the general idea is to not incentivize teams to embellish an injury to gain a stoppage in play during a rush by the opposing team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The good news is that Bishop will be back in net for this game. He initially left as a precaution but X-rays were negative and after being listed as ‘questionable’ he was confirmed as the Game 7 starter by Dallas on Monday afternoon. Bishop has been very good during the playoffs and is arguably the team’s ‘MVP’ at this point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Logic suggests that St. Louis’ home ice advantage gives them the edge here but the data indicates that might not be the case. In NHL series Game 7’s the home team has won 57.6% though are only 26-27 (49.1%) in the conference semifinals. This is significantly lower than the home team performance in all sports that use a 7 game playoff format–including all sports the home team wins at a 65.7% clip overall and a 64.6% clip in the quarterfinal round. Not surprisingly after such a tightly contested series the head to head data is also very close–over the past three years Dallas is 10-9-0 against St. Louis though the Blues hold a 5-4-0 advantage at home. With Bishop back in net we’ll gladly take the NHL hockey betting line <\/a>underdog in a game that should be a coin flip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n