In a winner-take-all Game 7, teams are looking for any type of advantage they can find. For the St. Louis Blues, they’ve likely noticed a glaring anomaly when it comes to where players have scored on Ben Bishop during the playoffs. Bishop has allowed an abnormally high amount of goals on the blocker side, specifically high in the net.

The 15 goals allowed high-blocker is the most of any remaining goalie and accounts for 53.6 percent of the total goals he’s allowed – well over league average during the playoffs which is 38.1 percent. Specific to the series against the Blues, the disparity is even more pronounced.

In any small sample of games, there’s bound to be somewhat random statistical anomalies but the Blues, and the Predators before them, have beat Bishop enough on clean shots to this area of the net, that it should be cause for concern for the Stars.

Bishop has an active stick and likes to poke-check when possible which leaves the high-blocker area vulnerable as seen in a couple of the examples above. It will be interesting to see if the Blues target this location in Game 7 tonight. Margins are razor thin in single-elimination games and a well placed shot over Bishop’s right shoulder could end up being the difference in the series.

(Photo by Scott Rovak/NHLI via Getty Images)