Blackhawks putting pressure on Blues as series continues

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The defending Stanley Cup champions are always the hardest team to eliminate from the playoffs.

It's especially difficult for a team like the St. Louis Blues looking to break through in the postseason by putting away their division rival in the first round.

They have three chances to do it, and they nearly capitalized on the first one but fell short in a double-overtime loss to the Blackhawks in Game 5 on Thursday night.

The Blues are down to two more strikes, and they want to make sure to avoid reaching the final one. 

"There’s no doubt that the longer this series goes, the more pressure will be on that team," Blackhawks captain Jonathan Toews said. "But at the end of the day, they’re as hungry as ever. I don’t think if you ask any of them, they’ll say that any of that matters.

"It’s focusing on what we know we can do. It’s not worrying about anything beyond tomorrow night. The way we went into last night’s game, we told ourselves we just have to play one shift at a time and find a way to win tonight.

"It’s probably going to be another one-goal game the way we saw, a big winner by (Patrick Kane) there yesterday. Tomorrow’s the same thing. We’re not getting ahead of ourselves. We’ll just focus on exactly what we need to do shift by shift."

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This comes less than 14 hours after the Blues displayed some confidence of their own that they will be able to come into Chicago and knock the Blackhawks off for a third straight time in Game 6 on Saturday night.

"It's going to be fun here to win it in Chicago," Blues defenseman Alex Pietrangelo said after Thursday's game. "That's the game plan right now. Their backs are still against the wall. We've all got to flip the switch and get ready for Saturday."

While it may come across as overly confident, this is the type of different determination the Blues appear to have this spring as opposed to years past that Toews acknowledged on Friday.

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The Blackhawks have had that for a while, and don't think winning three Stanley Cups makes this team any less hungry to win another one.

They've been there. They've done that. 

The Blues are the ones looking to capture their first title in franchise history, and the Blackhawks surely won't make it easy on them.

"Yeah, I agree," Blackhawks defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson responded when asked if the pressure gets warmer on the Blues as the series goes deeper. "Just looking at the past, I think the team had a lot of pressure to make it past the first round.

"We're still very hungry to go on a deep playoff run here. We're not satisfied in any way with what we've accomplished in the past. It's all about now and it's all about what we're going to do about this year and not what we've done in the past as I said.

"I think they're feeling the pressure, but we just have to take one game at a time here and we got to bring a better game than we've done here at home. We have to get a win."

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