The Dallas Stars know the St. Louis Blues well.
The two battled each other from afar down the stretch in the regular season for the Central Division crown and the top spot in the Western Conference—the Stars ended up winning those.
They also battled each other directly in five games this season, and the Blues came out ahead there, going 4-1-0 in those games—but it should be noted that in three of those Blues wins, they needed overtime.
In any case, these teams know each other well enough that Stars coach Lindy Ruff, while fully anticipating a very tough series against a very good team, doesn’t expect a lot of surprises.
"No. No, not really,” Ruff said, per Mike Heika of the Dallas Morning News. “I think they know everything about us. Those five games were extremely close. … My message to our team is to go out and play our game. They're going to play theirs, we're going to play ours. I'm not going to go over St. Louis for half an hour tonight, what they're going to do. I'm going to talk about how we're going to play and we're going to move forward."
