Kings-Blues tale of the tape

How do the Kings and the St. Louis Blues match up? Pretty closely, based on a look at the regular-season stats. Beyond that, in terms of style, the Kings and Blues would seem to be much closer than the Kings and Vancouver were. In that series, it was a contrast of styles, with the low-scoring, defense-and-goaltending Kings beating the high-powered Canucks. Now, in the second round, it’s a matchup of two defensive-minded teams, the two teams that were hardest to score against in the regular season. Here’s a look at the numbers, followed by Darryl Sutter’s thoughts on the similarities…

Goals/game: Kings, 29th (2.29), Blues 21st (2.51)
Goals against/game: Kings 2nd (2.07), Blues 1st (1.89)
Power-play percentage: Kings T-16th (17.0), Blues T-18th (16.7)
Penalty-kill percentage: Kings 4th (87.0), Blues 7th (85.8)
Penalty minutes/game: Kings 17th (11.3), Blues 27th (13.0)
Faceoff percentage: Kings 7th (51.6), Blues T-13th (50.4)
Hits: Kings 2nd (2,274), Blues 12th (1,949)
Blocked shots: Kings 29th (969), Blues 17th (1,120)

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SUTTER: “St. Louis and L.A. are probably closer in style (than the Kings and Canucks). If you look at it from a numbers standpoint, they scored more goals and allowed a few less, but it’s pretty close. Their top forwards are probably similar to our top forwards. Obviously the goaltenders have been great this season. So there are probably a lot of similarities.”

Question: Does it almost feel like looking at a mirror?

SUTTER: “Not really. If it was a mirror, then we would have had as many wins as they did. They won 30 games at home. There’s the mirror.”

The Blues went 30-6-5 at home while the Kings went 22-14-5 at home.