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Get your game notes: Blackhawks at Blues

Michal Handzus ,  Steve Ott

Chicago Blackhawks left wing Bryan Bickell, right, and center Jonathan Toews celebrates Bickell’s tying goal late in the third period in Game 4 of a first-round NHL hockey playoff series in Chicago, Ill. on Wednesday, April 23, 2014. (AP photo/Daily Herald, John Starks)

AP

Tonight on NBCSN, it’s the St. Louis Blues hosting the Chicago Blackhawks starting at 8 p.m. ET. Following are some game notes, as compiled by the NHL on NBC research team:

• Through four games of this series, the Blackhawks and Blues have played 57:33 of overtime hockey spread out over three games (40:26 in Game 1, 5:50 in Game 2, 11:17 in Game 4). That is the most overtime hockey that either club has ever played in a first-round playoff series.

• In Game 4, Blackhawks winger Patrick Kane recorded his third-career postseason overtime winner, tied for first in franchise history (Jeremy Roenick). At 25 years, 155 days, Kane became the sixth-youngest player in NHL history to score three postseason OT goals. The only players to score their third career postseason overtime goal at a younger age than Kane were Danny Gare (21 years, 334 days), Devin Setoguchi (24 years, 123 days), Dale Hunter (24 years, 266 days), Mel Hill (25 years, 46 days) and Mike Bossy (25 years, 106 days). Elias Sports Bureau

• Blues winger Vladimir Tarasenko missed the final 15 games of the regular season after undergoing hand surgery on Mar. 21, and his playing status for the first round was questionable. However, the 22-year-old Russian has scored in three of the four games this series, and in Game 4, he recorded his first career multi-goal postseason game and now leads all NHL players with four goals this playoffs.

• Blackhawks center Jonathan Toews, the reigning Selke Trophy winner and a finalist for the award this season (with Boston’s Patrice Bergeron and Los Angeles’s Anze Kopitar) has five points (one goal, four assists) in the series after missing the final six games of the regular season with an upper body injury. He leads all NHL players this postseason in faceoffs won (68) and has been on the ice for eight of 12 Chicago goals (tied for the team high, with linemate Brandon Saad).

• Of the NHL’s top six players in average ice time this postseason, four come from the Chicago-St. Louis series. One is Blackhawks defenseman Brent Seabrook, who will be serving the third and final game of his three-game suspension for his hit to the head of Blues captain David Backes in Game 2. Two others, the Blues’ Alex Pietrangelo and Hawks’ Niklas Hjalmarsson, are also tied for the league lead in blocked shots, with Columbus’s Jack Johnson.

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• Blues center David Backes, who is questionable for Game 5 (upper body injury), has missed 13 total games since the beginning of the 2008-09 season. Five of those – the final three games of the 2013-14 regular season and Games 3 and 4 of this series – have come since Apr. 10. During that span, the Blues have struggled, both in terms of record (0-5) and scoring (1.00 goals/game and shut out three times).

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