St. Louis Blues Game Preview: Club Looks to Extend Winning Streak to 3 Against Vancouver Canucks
After defeating the Edmonton Oilers 2-1 on Saturday night, the St. Louis Blues will fly West to British Columbia for the second end of a back-to-back and will face the Vancouver Canucks in a Sunday night matchup.
Vancouver’s in second place in the Atlantic Division with 73 points and a 35-23-3 record, but statistically they’re quite far behind the Blues’ 40-18-4 record. Though the Blues may feel some comfort in the fact that they’re superior to the Canucks record-wise, it’s important that they not take the game for granted, as they have had real problems with the latter portion of back-to-backs lately. They suffered bad losses in both instances in which they faced that situation during the month of February, losing 7-1 to the Columbus Blue Jackets on the 8th and falling 4-2 to the Pittsburgh Penguins last Saturday.
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It would have been a nice opportunity for the Blues to have another reunion with their former goaltender Ryan Miller, especially since the one-year anniversary of his acquisition by the Blues from the Buffalo Sabres just occurred on Saturday. However, Miller will be out on Sunday, and for the foreseeable future, as he recovers from an instance of friendly fire that left him with a knee injury. Eddie Lack should be in net for Vancouver on Sunday.
Since the Central Division-leading Nashville Predators just lost back-to-back games for the first time this season, the Blues are slowly moving closer towards the top of the division. A win on Sunday could put them within four points of the Preds for the division lead.
There’s no real reason to change the lineup on Sunday, though as the Blues play the second half of a back-to-back to begin a very busy month of March, it might be a good opportunity to get one of the reserve forwards, Chris Porter and Joakim Lindstrom, into a game. Porter has played just one game since returning from his December 29 ankle injury, while Lindstrom has been a healthy scratch for the past 10 games. With that said, there’s not really anyone who is an obvious candidate to be scratched in their place, so unless there’s someone who’s dealing with some sort of injury, it’s probably a stretch to suggest that either Porter or Lindstrom would get into the lineup on Sunday.
After Brian Elliott got a big confidence boost, starting in two straight games and winning both of them while giving up just one goal in each, Jake Allen will get back between the pipes for Sunday’s game against Vancouver. Though he seemed to be the team’s better goalie for the month of February, Allen struggled a bit in his last start on Tuesday night against Montreal, giving up five goals on 23 shots. Some of those struggles, however, can be attributed to the lack of fluidity among the Blues’ defensive corps on Tuesday, so if they play as cohesively as they did on Thursday and Saturday, Allen shouldn’t be under as much pressure as he was against the Canadiens.
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