Yeah, this is a pretty good summary of that last series.

Hi there. You might remember me from such blogs as SB Nation St. Louis, Puck Drunk Love, and St. Louis Game Time. Sometimes, I even post here. You know, on the blog that I own. Apologies for the slowness in posts, six loyal readers. I always have found it a cruel irony that hockey season ends around the time that work finally gives me a chance to really focus on my writing and the sport and team that I enjoy so much.

Unfortunately, that team that I enjoy so much kind of punctuated an outstanding, Central Division winning, Presidents' Trophy challenging, Jennings worthy season with a broom hitting their backsides. There's so much to be proud of and so much to be pleased with in this season, but for players, management, and the fans, the ultimate goal was missed. I think Jaroslav Halak's assessment of them not accomplishing anything might be a bit melodramatic, unless if you count accomplishment only as the main prize and not the steps you take to get there. You don't take the steps, you don't get the prize. Simple as that. The Blues have taken baby steps the past few seasons, and then this year was a massive hop in the right direction. The team came together, the plan was realized, and hockey's exciting again in St. Louis. That's a good thing. Would we all have preferred a Cup down Market Street? Duh. But you can't always get what you want, but I think Blues fans got what they needed this season.

I would like to see none of this tomorrow afternoon. Please. For dignity's sake, please.

Believe it or not, I'm not writing this as my usual eternal pessimist self. I'm writing this as a realist: the Blues stand a very good chance of ending their season on a four game losing streak and being eliminated from the playoffs by the Los Angeles Kings. It will not be pleasant if the Blues can't do what the Flyers did in 2010, which was bounce back from a 3-0 deficit to stun the Boston Bruins. It will hurt. It will suck as fans. But there is a way to get through this.

1. Don't take out your frustrations on Kings fans on Twitter, blogs, wherever. They didn't cast some magic voodoo spell to make our defense lack any sort of synergy at all, or for our top scorers to be impotent. At least I hope that they didn't.
2. Recognize this season. I know it's hard right after the team that you love gets bounced from the playoffs, but remember the good times -- mainly how the Blues fought for the Presidents' Trophy until the last weekend, and how they won the Central Division. That's pretty snazzy.
3. Take comfort that several other division leaders got bounced in the first round. Vancouver, Florida, Boston -- all were first round victims. So hey, at least the Blues lasted longer.
4. They stand the chance of racking up serious hardware at the NHL Awards in June. The Jennings is a lock (lot of help that is now), and with David Backes up for the Selke, Ken Hitchcock up for the Jack Adams, and GM Doug Armstrong up for exec of the year, this might be the first time in a while that they get attention at the awards show. If anyone has any sense, Jon Hamm will present the Jennings. No, if anyone planning those awards had any sense, Jon Hamm and David Boreanaz, both celebrity puckheads, would be co-hosts.
5. For your game time libations, don't buy something cheap and easy drinking. If they lose, you'll go through a 12-pack of Coors Light in a very short period of time and might get ill. Choose a more expensive, darker beer. One that has a higher alcohol level. Same buzz, fewer calories because you'll be drinking fewer beers... and hopefully fewer chances of getting sick. Though if you decide to shotgun a couple Delirium Tremens after the game, don't blame me.
6. Be proud of the Blues. It's ok to be disappointed, but hey. Blues fans know that these things happen -- they've been happening since 1967. We've always coped before, and we'll cope again. Keep wearing those t-shirts over the summer, and maybe even invest in a Blues bottle opener keychain for any baseball tailgating you'll do. It's handy and, seeing as how the Blues are the source of most of our alcoholism, appropriate.
7. Finally, keep watching playoff hockey. Sure, after tomorrow any emotional interest that we have in it might be gone, but it's still the greatest thing ever. Watch the division finals. Watch the Stanley Cup finals. And please, whatever you do, don't miss watching Gary Bettman get booed. Maybe this year the guy who tossed the Gatorade bottle in Vancouver'll be in the crowd, and maybe he'll have better aim.

Of course this happens in game one. And, of course the call gets botched:

Yes, that's blood running down Alex Pietrangelo's throat, and yes, that was Dwight King doing something that should have necessitated a five minute major and a game misconduct. I think I've been pretty consistent all year long (regardless of team) when I've said that you don't hit guys into the boards when they're a few feet out. They fall instead of hitting the boards, and then what happens to Petro happens. It's basic physics, and if the NHL is serious about protecting players they go after hits like that.

Or call two minute minors. Whatever. Will Shanny look at this? Who knows. I wouldn't be shocked if he didn't. Just a note, though, that the same ref that botched this call also botched the Raffi Torres into Marian Hossa hit in round one. Later he and the other ref working this game missed a T.J. Oshie high stick to the face to Colin Frasier that made Frasier's eye bleed.

Thank God linesmen are competent. Well, kind of thank God, since that gave the Kings a four minute powerplay, but still -- if that would have gone totally uncalled it would have been absurd. Then again, the fact that refs are rewarded for terrible jobs done by being moved up a round in the playoffs is absurd, too, so anything's possible.

Brad has more on this abomination at St. Louis Game Time. Please don't buy this shirt. It's not only a jinx, it's fugly.

Round two of the Stanley Cup Finals begins tonight for the Blues, as they square off against the Los Angeles Kings (note: head to The Royal Half for the opposition's take on stuff). Going into round two, Las Vegas oddmakers Bovada have the Blues as 15/4 favorites to win the Cup now that previous favorites the Bruins, Canucks, and Penguins went the way of the dodo after the first round. I was kind of happy to see this -- after all, it's attention! -- and then I put the link on my Facebook page.

"NOOO. IT'S A JINX!!!"

Well, damn. But is it? Is it really a jinx? Sports fans are odd about their superstitions -- not changing socks, wearing a "lucky jersey," and playoff beards rank up there. We're no goaltenders -- I don't talk to my jersey before I put it on -- but we're still quirky. Anything that gives comfort and order to something that has any chance of any outcome, fans gravitate towards. It also gives a scapegoat if the team loses. Instead of blaming your team, you can blame your lucky socks that your wife washed, or your lucky jersey that you left at a friend's house (which I did). Fix the problem, and the team's chances of winning the next game are right back on track!

Except that they're not -- their chances of winning are just the same as their chances were the game that they lost. Traditions and jinxes are just security blankets, or outlets for paranoia. People didn't like it when the Blackhawks' Jonathan Toews was featured on a mural with the Cup before they won it, because they were scared it'd anger the hockey gods (or maybe because Toews looked like a pig). Honestly, if the Hawks would have lost the Cup that year, the mural would have served as an outlet for confusion and anger more than anything else.

Jinxes and traditional superstitions are fine to have -- it's human nature. Just don't take them too seriously. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to find my back-up lucky jersey for tonight.

As pointed out by fellow Bloguin blog Awful Announcing, Grantland's Bill Simmons has an issue with the St. Louis Blues. Whatever did the Blues ever do to him, you might ask? Well, they didn't credential writer Katie Baker for the second round of the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs. Horrors! A major sporting event with a press box full of media types didn't have room for a writer for a website that, as AA pointed out, only mentioned the Blues like three times this season? No.

Still laughing that the Blues denied @katiebakes for a media credential last weekend. The NHL is the best. DON'T COVER US!!! STAY AWAY!

— Bill Simmons (@sportsguy33) April 24, 2012

The Scottrade Center pressbox will preumably be crowded for this series. A second playoff series hasn't happened in St. Louis for a decade. The Blues have been playing outstanding hockey all season, and the noteriety has been building all year. Media types from ESPN to TSN to Hockey Night in Canada are all taking notice, plus you have the St. Louis Post-Dispatch as well as flagship radio station KMOX's sports reporters and KRTS, KMOV, and KSDK up there in the box. Local media always have covered the Blues well. As well as the Cardinals? Of course not, but still better than the local media covered a now-extinct type of bird here in Atlanta.

Websites that don't cover a team shouldn't expect to get pressbox seating for that team. Professional sports teams aren't obligated to offer up press access to anyone, let alone bloggers outside of the mainstream media. Some teams are very open with this -- and, despite Simmons' snarky comments, NHL teams tend to be the best about allowing access -- and other teams are not. Small market teams who need any sort of media exposure they can get are normally tops of the list of teams to grant access to bloggers, though several larger market teams do for regular season games as well.

Tweets like Simmons' are why teams might be hesitant to hand out credentials to people in the future. The Thrashers were always forthcoming with media credentials, but only for blogs that A) covered the team and B) did so professionally. That's how most teams operate. If you don't want to be credentialed, act like Simmonds did. It'll be a miracle if any NHL team wants to give him a press pass again after that little outburst.

Or not. History has shown, in 1969 and 1998, that the Blues can hold their own against the Los Angeles Kings in the playoffs. This past season, though, the Blues had some issues with L.A. during the regular season, mostly because Jonathan Quick is the stingiest damned goaltender in existence. The odds of there being some low-scoring games in this series are about one to one. When you have the Jenning's Trophy winners on one squad and the guy who'll probably win the Veznia on the other, you won't see any blowouts any time soon.

Last round saw the Blues square off against the Sharks, who have some awesome fans. This round, the Kings' fans are finally getting rewarded for patience just like the Blues' fans are. Go harrass them at Jewels from the Crown, Battle of California, and Bloguin's own The Royal Half. TRH will have about five billion more snarky photoshops than I will, mostly because he's funnier than I am and partially because I'm slammed at work. If this series started just a few weeks later...

One down, three to go.

Pending tonight's Canucks/Kings game, the Blues will either know their opponent for round two (the Los Angeles Kings) or not, but that's not seeming to matter too much to Blues fans. You know what? It shouldn't. The Blues made it to the second round of the playoffs last night for the first time since 2002. For reference, George W. Bush was still in office and American Idol was still watchable.

That was a long time ago.

It was too long ago. Ignore naysayers, Blues fans. Ignore everyone calling our town and team "mid-market." Ignore folks who are fixated on the next round's ratings. Ignore Wings (and possibly soon to be Blackhawks) fans who are trying to make themselves feel better by pointing out that the Blues've been in those teams' spots before. No kidding -- every team who has made the playoffs have been, and that's ok. Disappointments happen, and the Blues have had their fair share. That doesn't mean that this season, just because a disappointment might have happened here and there in the past, means any less because it's *not* a disappointment.

Keep your head on straight, and realize that there are two more rounds before the big dance. The Blues are; none of this "celebration after every playoff round" fuss that baseball teams do. They're focused on the big prize; the fans are too. But you can get happy about division championships and winning playoff rounds. The organization has been cultivating the team that is currently on ice for years. Be proud about it. Be happy. Buy division championship gear, and tell everyone you know that they're moving to the second round.

Just make sure that you keep your eyes on the Cup, because theirs are there too.

Today is the one year anniversary of the last Atlanta Thrashers game, so I figured it'd be appropriate to reflect briefly on this season sans a team in my backyard (sorry, folks - Duluth is not my backyard, Duluth is Outer Mongolia) and on a season where the Blues've exceeded my expectations and made me the happiest hockey fan in the state of Georgia. These bullets aren't in chronological order, and some of them might not even make sense, but here they are. Dodge them if you dare.

Candygram!

The Blues've picked the safer bet between the Sharks and Los Angeles Kings, not that there was much picking involved. The Sharks're a tough team -- not like there're any creampuffs in the playoffs -- but their goaltending can be exploited. The Blues went 4-0 over them this year, as opposed to the 1-2-1 that they did over the Kings. No one in their right mind felt comfortable facing Jonathan Quick. He's the Hollywood version of Pekka Rinne.

Time to go take our Jennings Trophy and show those Sharkies what for. But a polite what for, especially if you head over to Couch Tarts or Fear the Fin. Those're some awesome people over there. 

YES! They have soft pretzels in the pressbox tonight! WOOOOO!

It's great to see how a year of hard work has come down to four fizzling losses in a row (possibly five by the time that you read this) by a team that has done nothing but bust its butt. What's causing the Blues to lose? Relying on skill. How... motivating. Thank you, Mr. Hitchcock. Hard work >> skill. Duh. So, what's continuing to happen? The "skill players" have taken up root on the ice, while the hard workers are chillaxin' up in the press box. 

Ian Cole, Chris Porter, Jaden Schwartz, B.J. Crombeen, Scott Nichol, and Kent Huskins have had extended time in the press box as of late. What's something that these guys have in common? The need to bust their asses. Schwartz (and Cole, to a degree) also have some skill, but right now the want to work is stronger than their abilities. Nichol and Huskins play hard hockey every time they're on the ice. Chris Porter is lacking in the skill department, but is part of an outstanding fourth line, two thirds of which have been relegated to the press-box. What Hitchcock is stating is obvious, but what he's doing is confusing. Why are you insisting on playing your skill guys who don't seem like they give a rip? Why put guys out there in positions that they're not well qualified for so you can get your skill guys out there on a fourth line that they don't belong on? 

I hate saying this about guys with as much ability as Chris Stewart and Matt D'Agostini, but they need to be in the box. They look apathetic, and they flat out look like they don't belong out there. Big hits that don't do anything, or retaliatory hits that don't make sense: these things do not equal playing hockey.

Give them some time in the pressbox for the season finale, and then work the hell out of them in the next practice or two. If they still don't respond, give them some pressbox time to start the playoffs. Right now, there are some supremely talented players out there who aren't giving the Blues the oomph on the ice to win. What good is that?