The St. Louis Blues have been bitten with the injury bug in January, and their struggles continue ahead of their matchup against the Ottowa Senators.
The St. Louis Blues have been treading water at this point in the season, and that is due in part because of the injuries that have started to pile up. These problems will continue tonight as leading goal scorer David Perron will be sidelined with an upper-body injury.
Zach Sanford, Tyler Bozak, and Robert Thomas are all expected to miss tonight’s game as well for St. Louis. Reports out of morning skate say that Bozak is the closest one of them all to return to the lineup.
Ottowa Senators (7th Place In Atlantic)
Record: 19-24-5
Last 10: 4-5-1
Point Leaders: Mark Stone (50), Matt Duchene (46)
To say that the Senators are in a rebuilding mode would be the biggest understatement of the century. Even though the point total between the Blues and Senators are separated by four points, the Senators lack in named talent that the Blues possess.
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Because of the injuries that the Blues have sustained over the past few weeks, the lines for tonight’s game will be dramatically different from previous games.
The first line will feature a line that we have not seen since the opening weeks of the season. Head coach Craig Berube will reunite Pat Maroon, Ryan O’Reilly, and Vladimir Tarasenko.
Berube claims that this line played very well when paired together early on in the season, and I agree with him. The combination of O’Reilly and Tarasenko was something that many Blues fans looked forward to before the season started.
As the season has gone on O’Reilly has demonstrated that he is one of the best players on the Blues roster, and pairing him with the team’s best scorer will only make the two of them better.
Brayden Schenn and Jaden Schwartz will stick together on the second line for the Blues tonight and will be joined by newly activated Alex Steen. The notion of putting Steen on the second line is something I will fail to understand.
I do not doubt that Steen still has value, but placing him on the second line does not make any sense to me. Put him on the third line, and give a kid like Jordan Kyrou a chance to play with some skilled players.
Defensively, the Blues are completely healthy, which means that someone who should be in the lineup, is going to be a healthy scratch. The odd man out tonight is going to be Joel Edmundson. I won’t pick and choose when it comes to the Blues defensemen, but I think there might be others more deserving of a healthy scratch.
Jordan Binnington will get another start in net for St. Louis tonight. The young goaltender is 3-0-1 on the season, and he is coming off his first career loss against the New York Islanders.