from Mark Spector of Sportsnet,

Lindy Ruff has been around a long, long time. Which, in turn, has left him a damned good coach. Good enough to be in the Jack Adams talk for the NHL’s coach of the year award, the finalists for which come out Thursday night.

There’s no scheme that St. Louis coach Ken Hitchcock could dream up that Ruff won’t have an answer for, and vice versa, as two old Alberta-bred coaches with more than 2,800 regular season games coached between them push and pull over whose preferred style dictates the way this series is played.

We thought this to be true when the series began, but now we are certain: Dallas isn’t going to win at St. Louis’ heavy, forechecking game. And the Blues can’t beat Dallas’ at the “score off the rush” game the Stars prefer.

So this series stands at 2-1 for St. Louis. But really, we’ve watched two games played St. Louis’ way, and one for Dallas. So it’s more like, Hitchcock 2, Ruff 1.

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