ST. LOUIS -- Detroit versus St. Louis in the postseason. Again.

With a matchup in the second round. Again.

With the first two games in Detroit. Again.

With Detroit in control. Again.

It happens every spring. Okay, so it only seems like every spring.

This is the fourth time in the past seven seasons that the Red Wings and Blues have met in the conference semifinals. Each time, the Wings have had home ice advantage. Each time, the Wings have won: 4-games-to-3 in 1996, 4-2 in 1997 and 4-2 in 1998.

It's fixing to happen ... again. The Wings lead this go-round 2-zip as the best-of-seven series hits Savvis Center for Game 3 tonight and Game 4 on Thursday night.

Wings versus Blues. Wings over Blues.

How does this keep happening year after year after year?

Simple. The Blues keep making the same mistakes -- on the ice, behind the bench and in the front office -- year after year after year.

Possession is 99 percent of the game
It starts with basic hockey philosophy: Be strong up the middle.

The Wings are. The Blues aren't.

At center, the Wings have two-time Stanley Cup winners Steve Yzerman, Sergei Fedorov, Kris Draper and Igor Larionov, plus gifted young Pavel Datsyuk. They are so deep there that Yzerman is playing right wing at even strength.

The Blues counter with Doug Weight, Pavol Demitra, Mike Eastwood and Ray Ferraro. None has won a Cup. Demitra started his career at center, was moved to the wing for a reason -- he's far better there -- and moved back to center this season by necessity.

The Blues opted to let Pierre Turgeon leave last summer after acquiring Weight. As usual, they ignore the reality that every Cup champ of recent vintage has had an elite 1-2 punch at center.

As usual, Detroit's centers own the faceoff dot. They have won a whopping 59 percent of their draws, 87 to 61. The edge in Game 2 was comically lopsided, 51-30, as the Wings won the game 3-2.

Eastwood is the top gun on the Blues and he's treading water at 21 wins and 22 losses. Weight is 8-16. Demitra is 11-20, including 1-9 in Game 2. Winger Keith Tkachuk, who takes some draws for Demitra, is 5-13.

The Wings have three go-to guys: Yzerman is 26-13, Draper is 24-15 and Fedorov is 22-17.

Winning the draw means puck control. The Wings have it. The Blues don't. This is especially crucial on special teams, which are especially crucial at playoff time.

Win the draw on your penalty kill, and you can shoot the puck down the ice and drain 30 seconds off the clock. Win the draw on your power play, and you can milk the most from your man advantage.

This helps explain why the Blues are 0-for-the-series on the power play. The Wings have two power-play goals plus a short-handed goal. The teams have each scored twice at even strength. The three special-team goals are the difference in the series.

The defense doesn't rest ... ever
On defense, each team has a pair of Norris Trophy winners who see endless ice. But during the season, the Wings paced Nicklas Lidstrom and Chris Chelios, the 40-year-old war horse. The Blues, as always, rode Chris Pronger and Al MacInnis hard all season.

Every year, every playoff team knows that the key to beating the Blues is to chip away at their two linchpin defenders. Get the puck in deep. Make the two big boys turn and chase it. Run them relentlessly. Grind them down. Tire them out.

The thinking, borne out nearly every spring, is that when fatigue strikes, MacInnis will wear down and Pronger will blow up.

So far in the series, Pronger has kept his cool and his high level of play. MacInnis is another story.

As the regular season wound down, rival NHL scouts were shocked at MacInnis's dropoff in foot speed and hand speed. He was using his stick more than his skates to cut off attackers, and he was not able to get off his fearsome slapshot.

In this series, he has been a non-factor offensively in the series. And in Game 2, his defensive gaffe led to Detroit's game winner: He inexplicably left Luc Robitaille open near the crease to double-team a Wing further out in the slot.

Fatigue may be the culprit. MacInnis is logging 29 minutes per game in the series, compared to 27 minutes in the regular season. Chelios is at 28:38 in the series, but he has plenty of jump after logging just 25:18 in the regular season.

The Wings, like the Blues, are vulnerable beyond their Big Two defenders. The Blues have been unable to press Detroit's lesser four on D, partly because the wingers hold up forecheckers and the centers come back for outlet passes.

Net effect
In goal, the Blues never had the better man in these recent playoff jousts. Not when the under-heralded Mike Vernon and Chris Osgood were beating the Blues en route to Stanley Cups. And not now.

Dominik Hasek is back to his dominator form for Detroit. For St. Louis, young Brent Johnson is learning that on-the-job playoff training is more fun against Chicago's bad-hands people than against Detroit's surgeons.

Proper prior planning prevents poor performance
As always, Detroit has a big edge behind the bench with Scotty Bowman, who started his coaching career in St. Louis.

Mike Keenan coached St. Louis in 1996, the first series in this run. Joel Quenneville took over for Keenan in 1997, losing in six games to Bowman that year and the next -- despite winning the opener both times in Detroit.

The Wings seem to have a bit of a jump on the Blues in prescouting, with a detail or two paying off big.

For instance, Detroit sent both of its top pro scouts, Dan Belisle and Mark Howe, to watch the Blues in the conference quarterfinals. Did they notice a weakness with Weight moving to the point on the power play after spending all season up front. Perhaps.

In Game 1, when Weight went to the point, the Wings rushed him. Eventually, after blocking his shot, they got a two-on-one breakaway with Weight the lone defender. Brett Hull scored off his own rebound, with Weight backing into the crease and obscuring his own goalie.

Bowman has been better at both set gameplans and changing on the fly as the plan unravels. He never asks his team to do anything it hasn't done before.

In fact, Bowman's best moves are returning to old moves. Just before the Blues series, he re-hitched the Two Kids and a Goat line, with the veteran Hull back with energetic kids Boyd Devereaux and Datsyuk. In the previous series, Bowman rebuilt the Crash Line of Draper between Kirk Maltby and Darren McCarty. Both lines have tormented the Blues in different ways, the Kids-Goat line with hits scoring and the Crash Line with its muscle.

Quenneville, as customary at playoff time, scraps the puck-moving, positional system built over six months and opts for an ad-lib, slam-bang approach.

As usual, as his players start to head-hunt, they put themselves out of position and into the penalty box. And so the Blues wind up winning battles, as they did in Game 1 with a 50-24 edge in hits, while losing the scoreboard war, 2-0.

It doesn't help the Blues that when the two teams meet in the playoffs, the Wings always are coming off the better season. Which means home ice advantage.

The Blues are 4-8 at Joe Louis Arena over these past four playoff jousts. On the other hand, maybe home ice is a non-issue. The Blues are 3-6 at Savvis Center over the same playoff span.

Of course, that doesn't mean the Blues can't win. All they have to do is finally recognize all of their shortcomings, fix them overnight with the personnel on hand and win four of the next five games.

Theoretically, the Blues could pull all of that off. For once. Except for one other factor. The Wings have their number. And both teams know it.

Tom Wheatley is a writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.