The St. Louis Blues really put their foot on the throats of the Dallas Stars in Game 5 of this best-of-seven series on Sunday afternoon. Things could've gone sideways for them after they were beaten in Game 4, a game which they were clearly the better team for the majority of the night, but instead, they dominated and walked out of Dallas one game away from the Western Conference Finals.
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ODDS ANALYSIS
The one thing we've learned from these playoffs that we get reminded of every single year is the fact that just when you think you've got everything figured out, you realize you don't know anything.
The overtime winner by Cody Eakin on Thursday night really felt like it might be the turning point for the Stars in this series. Instead, as -111 favorites, they came out flat and lost 4-1 on their home ice.
St. Louis has been favored by relatively large margins at home in this series at -145 and -146, and even though it's Dallas which is on the brink of elimination, we can't imagine the margin being any smaller than that on Monday night.
GOALIE REPORT
Is the Dallas goalie carousel going to spin one more time? Lindy Ruff has had a hard time settling on a goalie in this series, and the fact of the matter is that neither of Kari Lehtonen nor Antti Niemi has been any good.
The worst of the worst might've been Sunday afternoon, though. Lehtonen stopped just 18-of 21 shots in the loss, and he only faced two shots in the third period before Paul Stastny netted the empty-netter with just 1:40 to play in the game which ended all doubt about the outcome.
Brian Elliott probably had more work than he would've wanted in Game 5, but he continued to come up big time and time again. It was his best game in this series for sure, as he stopped 27-of-28 shots.
LIVE BETTING
Where on earth has Jamie Benn gone in this series? He scored 41 goals in the regular season and four times in six games against Minnesota in the opening round, but here against St. Louis, he has just one goal and three helpers in five games. That just won't cut it for one of the top offensive teams in the league, and putting up a -2 in the +/- category just isn't going to be good enough to stay alive.
Jason Spezza, Dallas' other active 30-goal scorer, has yet to find the back of the net in this series.
QUICK PICK
Missing Tyler Seguin has really hurt the Stars more than they'd probably like to admit, and even if this series does go seven, it's highly unlikely he'll be back on the ice before even Memorial Day. Dallas isn't going to get that far in all likelihood.
We just can't see the Blues coughing up their chance to close out this series at home. Sure, the more we think we know, the less we actually do know, but Dallas hasn't played this series at its pace at all from start to finish, and there's just no sign of that changing in Game 6.
NHL Odds: Blues 3, Stars 1
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