Ahead of last night's game, St. Louis Blues head coach Jim Montgomery made a shocking lineup decision: he decided to healthy scratch Jordan Kyrou.
Heading into the match against the Buffalo Sabres, Kyrou had gone four consecutive games without a point and had seen his ice time dwindle in turn. The sustained lack of production (only eight points in 14 games) and reduced ice time culminated in the scratching of one of the Blues' highest-paid players and most important forwards.
The good news is, the healthy scratch seemed to work: the rest of the Blues lineup took notice and performed admirably in a shutout of the Sabres.
For weeks, Montgomery and the coaching staff have been making peripheral changes and tweaks around the fringes of the lineup: swapping Nathan Walker in and out for other fourth-liners, moving Kyrou, Dylan Holloway, and Jimmy Snuggerud up and down throughout the top nine, cycling through defensemen like Logan Mailloux on the third pair--and none of it seemed to work. The Blues continued to lose, and their top players weren't producing. Aside from a short time out of the lineup with injury for Robert Thomas, Montgomery hadn't scratched the team's best.
That changed yesterday with the scratch of Kyrou--and it sent a message to the rest of the roster that, if this sort of unacceptable play and losing continues, then nobody in the lineup would be safe. If the coach was willing to bench one of the team's best players, then he'll bench anyone he has to in order to snap the team out of this fugue state.
In the short term, scratching Kyrou seems to have served its purpose: the team responded, they went out and played well against the Sabres, and won. The long-term ramifications won't be known for a while (will this leave a sour taste in Kyrou's mouth--enough that he'd want out?) but, for now, the Blues are back in the win column and can maybe get some momentum going.