Seattle vs St Louis: The Blues to beat conference underdog

St. Louis defeated Seattle in their first-ever head-to-head encounter, 2-1. Will Dave Hakstol's team be able to get revenge in the upcoming clash? We predict the musicians will be closer to success again!

Seattle made their NHL debut this season, so the first regular-season goes to the swing of things. The Kraken do not have any great tasks, demonstrating very modest results, and occasionally they even collapse. Dave Hakstol's team, for example, had a disastrous stretch in which they lost 12 of 13 games between December and January, completely denying themselves any chance of making the playoffs. Nevertheless, they beat Chicago and San Jose 3-2 in their last two games, but that was not enough to drop out of the bottom spot in the Western Conference standings.

St. Louis are one of the most consistent teams in the NHL, and making the playoffs is too easy a task. The Blues have been playing very maturely in the regular season and avoiding any major upsets. The last time the Blues suffered two straight losses in early December, they were victorious in 15 games and had three straight losses, each time rolling to success after a loss. All of this confirms the good form of Craig Berube's squad. In addition, they defeated Nashville 5-3 the day before. St. Louis now sits in third place in the Western Conference standings, but they are already six points behind the leader.

Seattle and St. Louis are teams that are located at different poles of the Western Conference standings. While the Kraken are among the outsiders, the Blues fight for the lead. That alone makes the visitors the favourites for the upcoming encounter. What's more, the only head-to-head encounter between the opponents also ended in favour of Craig Berube's charges. Now the Blues are in much better shape, which they kept during the whole regular season, so I'd have to bet on a St. Louis victory for 1.55.

Ivan Barbashev has a great regular season, which can already be considered the best of his career. In 38 played meetings, the Russian has already scored 34 points (15 goals + 19 assists), his personal best performance, although more than half of the regular season is ahead of him. Now the 26-year-old forward plays in the first unit, and the day before, he had a crazy game with four scoring chances: he scored twice and assisted twice to his teammates. With that in mind, Ivan Barbashev's Total Over 0.5 point for 4.00 should be a good bet.

St. Louis can hardly be considered one of the teams that are used to showing bright and spectacular hockey. Craig Berube's team pays much more attention to defense while taking advantage of their opponents' mistakes. The statistics may prove it as well. In the last four games with the Blues, only 16 goals were scored (4.00 goals per game on average), which is quite modest. Neither should we expect Seattle to suddenly start playing open hockey in an away game against such a powerful opponent, so we might consider betting on Total Under 5.5 pucks for 2.05.