Canucks set to face the St. Louis Blues in first round of Stanley Cup Playoffs

The Vancouver Canucks (as you may have heard) are playoff-bound after defeating the Minnesota Wild in the fourth game of their best of five play in series Friday night.

Chris Tanev played the hero with the OT winner, and Canuck nation was riding high well into the weekend, and now the Canucks know who they’ll be facing in round one of the playoffs.

Vancouver will face the defending Stanely Cup champion St. Louis Blues, who lost to a banged-up Dallas Stars team earlier this afternoon in double overtime by a score of 2-1. The Stars were missing both Tyler Seguin and starting goaltender Ben Bishop in the game.

We’ll have tons of analysis in the coming days to get you geared up for this series, and these two teams have some history in the form of last year’s Calder Trophy winner and runner up for the award.

Goaltender Jordan Binnington lost out on the NHL’s rookie of the year award to Elias Pettersson and said back in November that he feels he should have gotten the trophy over Pettersson.

“There’s a little bit of that bad taste in my mouth about the outcome last year,” Binnington said, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “But he’s a talented player, so it’s good going up against some of the best.”

Binnington was asked to clarify if he felt that he deserved the Calder and he confirmed by saying “yeah” before changing the subject.

Now he’ll have a chance to go up against Pettersson once again in what is undoubtedly going to be a thoroughly entertaining seven-game series.