The St. Louis Blues are coming off of a horrendous loss at home in their previous game against the Minnesota Wild. They will look to bounce back against the Hurricanes tonight.
The St. Louis Blues are seemingly unable to put together a string of wins so far this season and the potential loss of Brayden Schenn does not help the struggling Blues against a sneaky good Hurricane team.
The potential loss of Schenn will, however, clear the way for some of the younger players to get more meaningful ice time. Robert Thomas and Robby Fabbri are expected to be paired together alongside David Perron on the second line for tonight’s game.
Carolina Hurricanes
Record: 6-6-2
Last 10: 3-6-1
Point Leaders: Sebastian Aho (17), Micheal Ferland (11)
After a hot start to begin the season, the Carolina Hurricanes have struggled recently, only winning three times in their previous ten games.
The offense for the Hurricanes seems to be top heavy to start the season. Led by Aho, the Canes top line is generating the majority of the team’s scoring. If the Blues can shut down the Aho line, among other things, they should be in good shape.
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There are changes up and down the Blues projected lineup for tonight’s game including the aforementioned second line.
With the absence of Schenn, Ryan O’Reilly will center the Blues top line with Jaden Schwartz and Vladimir Tarasenko. This is the first time O’Reilly will be on the same line as Tarasenko since they started the season together with Patrick Maroon.
The third line has the least amount of changes. Alex Steen and Tyler Bozak will continue to play together but will have a new linemate. Zach Sanford will move away from the line that worked so well with Perron and O’Reilly and will play with the veterans, Bozak and Steen.
Ivan Barbashev will take the spot of Schenn in the lineup and will center the fourth line with Oskar Sundqvist and Maroon. Barbashev played well in his limited time with the Blues so far this season, and It’ll be interesting to see if head coach Mike Yeo wants to reinsert Barbashev back into the penalty kill.
The forward lines do not concern me as much as the defensive pairings. The offense for the Blues has not been a problem especially on the powerplay, the Blues have been recieving plenty of offense from the forward group.
Defense continues to be the problem for St. Louis. For some reason, Jay Bouwmeester continues to get top line minutes with Alex Pietrangelo, and the Blues are clearly seeing something different than we are at home because Bouwmeester has been one of the Blues worst players all season long.
Jordan Schmaltz cannot be any worse than Bouwmeester and can still benefit from getting experience at a young age and should be getting more opportunities to showcase what he can bring to the table.
I’ll be most excited to see how much ice time the Fabbri-Thomas-Perron line gets tonight. Both Fabbri and Thomas have looked good in limited time this season, and it will be exciting to see if Yeo gives them an opportunity to make an impact on the game.