St. Louis Blues at Vancouver Canucks - 8/16/20 NHL Picks and Prediction

The St. Louis Blues need a win here to give themselves a real shot of winning this series. The St. Louis Blues are averaging 2.2 goals per game and are scoring on 14.3 percent of their power play opportunities. David Perron leads St. Louis with three goals, Ryan O'Reilly has three assists and Colton Parayko has 22 shots on goal. Defensively, the St. Louis Blues are allowing 3.6 goals per game and are killing 68 percent of their opponents power plays. Jordan Binnington has allowed 17 goals on 123 shots faced and Jake Allen has allowed one goal on 38 shots.

The Blues are 57-27 in their last 84 games playing on 1 days rest, 1-4 in their last 5 games as a favorite and 0-5 in their last 5 overall. The Canucks are 4-0 in their last 4 games playing on 1 days rest, 5-0 in their last 5 games as an underdog and 5-0 in their last 5 overall. The over is 18-7-1 in Canucks last 26 overall. The Blues are 1-4 in the last 5 meetings. The under is 21-9-5 in the last 35 meetings.

It feels like these teams are heading in completely different directions and the Canucks have now won six of the last eight meetings against the Blues. However, the Blues showed a better effort in their game two loss by coming back in the third period, and they got 12 more shots on goal than the Canucks. While you don't want to be down 0-2 in a series, the Blues can take positives out of game two and should feel OK about their chances in this contest. With their backs against the wall, I'll take the defending champs to get a much needed victory.