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by Randy Gardner

Last week, I wrote about the overlap of two of our major sports here in St. Louis. That would be baseball and hockey. Usually baseball overshadows hockey, but this year after the bad start that the Cardinals, the comments that I am hearing are all about the excitement surrounding playoff hockey.

So let’s start with hockey, could this be the year that the Blues go all the way?

A few months ago I talked about teams doing really well when they do not have a lot of expectations on their shoulders and that’s exactly where the Blues are right now.

All the way through the homestretch they were kind of off and on and basically sneak into the playoffs, but now are playing really well. As a coach myself, this is the exact situation that I like my teams to be in where they start to gel at the exact time that they need to. That usually means that momentum that is needed to carry through to a championship swings at the right time.

   Unfortunately for hockey there are so many rounds to the playoffs that that pendulum needs to be to the positive side for a long period of time, sometimes too long. So my question is, will the Blues peak too early in the playoffs and not have enough gas for the final rounds?

On the other side of the ball though, or should I say puck, is the fact that if you lose a series you are out so you have to be on top of your game every single night. I love where were sitting right now as the players and the coaches seem to be on the same page. The main message with the new coach is the one that players can adhere to, basically he’s a players type coach. It’s going to be a lot of fun over the next month or so, (we hope that long) so fasten your seatbelt and just sit back and enjoy some good St. Louis Blues hockey.

Onto baseball now, what a disappointing start for the Cards. As they sit right now they are two and five (before Tuesday’s game) with a horrendous amount of strike outs at the plate and fielding problems that plague many youth teams.

I heard someone say that it takes awhile to get acclimated to playing in different ballparks in front of bigger crowds and at night compared to playing down in Florida during the day every day where the situations and circumstances are pretty much the same. Do I agree with this, I’m not really sure?

These guys are professionals and you would think that they change the venue to bigger ballparks and more in the limelight would be even more attractive and take those lackadaisical mistakes away.

I say this every single year, but baseball is a journey through many months untill October so let’s not make sure to get too happy or two down about any stretch of games. The Cardinals always seem to find someway to string wins together during the season. It’s always more fun though to be sitting on top of the division near the end with no worries. We have become so accustomed to that in St. Louis that if the team doesn’t win everybody thinks there’s a major problem.

Let’s look on the bright side, starting pitching was pretty good on the homestand. It’s just strike out ratios and fielding percentages that really need to be worked on.

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