When asked who the tougher playoff opponent was, Hitchcock responded, in a locker room stick-it-up-to-piss-players-off fashion, that the Stars were better than the Hawks. As if Chicago wasn’t already coming to crush St. Louis next season. The next game, Hitchcock proved himself wrong. The Blues tremendously outplayed the Stars, something they never did with the Hawks.

The Stars have a few units to blame here. They gave up 21 penalty minutes. I know it’s easy to be angered by the Blues. Everybody should hate the team from St. Louis. They’re dirty, they’re mean, and they’re pure grit. But you can’t expect to foul them that much and come away with a win. When the Blackhawks were at their worst was when the Blues had them playing a different style than they’re used to. The Stars need to take a breather, and relax. They need to play the style they grew accustomed to and take the attack to Brian Elliot. He’s beatable, as Sceviour’s goal showed. If they can make the Blues play fast and skilled, the Stars will get victories, because that’s not in the Blues wheelhouse.

The second unit at blame is defense and goaltending. The back ice for the Stars needs to step up their game to allow the offense to explode. They’re not doing that. The three quick goals from the Blues in the first and second showed that it isn’t Lehtonen entirely at fault. Part of it is that the defense isn’t working. There are players – Goligoski, Russell – that are having a decent playoffs. Those are guys on contract years. They wanna be paid, so they better have good playoffs. The ones who are secure, they’re not playing.

The Stars are too focused on offense. They need a legitimate superstar on defense, and while great, Klingberg fell off in the back half of the season. He’s not elite, at least not yet. The Stars need a Duncan Keith, a Pietrangelo, a Hedman, a Weber or a Josi. They don’t have one yet. That’s going need to change if they’re going to wind up winning anything. They got lucky, and they came up against a weak Minnesota team in the first round. That didn’t happen again in the second.

The Blues outhit, out blocked, but had more turnovers than the Stars. If the Stars can learn to get possession and to capitalize, the team will find themselves winning again. It’s just a question of if they can do that.