St. Louis Blues Ready to Get Back to Full Speed Against Struggling Philadelphia Flyers Team
With a Tuesday win under their belt, the Blues will look to continue the streak against a struggling Flyers squad.
After a solid 4-1 win over the Arizona Coyotes on Tuesday night, the St. Louis Blues will look to build up some quality momentum on Thursday against the Philadelphia Flyers. The Blues have struggled to maintain on-ice chemistry recently, shuffling through a myriad of line combinations, which has caused the offense to be very inconsistent and prevented the Blues from winning back-to-back games since they snapped a three-game streak on November 10.
While the Blues are understandably concerned about their lack of productivity over the past month, the Flyers should be much more worried. Philadelphia, which was one of the league’s most talented teams just a few years ago, now has a 11-11-6 record and sits sixth in the Metropolitan Division heading into Thursday’s matchup. They’ve lost two straight home games to the Columbus Blue Jackets and New York Islanders, so they’ll be looking to avoid a prolonged losing streak as they visit St. Louis.
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Like the Blues, the Flyers have utilized a fairly large stable of players through the first third of the season, using 26 different skaters through their first 28 games. While the Flyers’ best player, Claude Giroux, has been back in full force during 2015-16 and has 24 points through 28 games, some of the other members of their core have struggled. Winger Jakub Voracek, who was fifth in the NHL with 81 points last season, has continued to be productive as a passer, collecting 14 assists, but he has just one goal while playing in all of the Flyers’ games thus far. Outside of Giroux, Voracek, longtime reliable contributor Wayne Simmonds, and surging 24-year-old center Brayden Schenn, the Flyers have no other 10-point players on their team.
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The Blues’ lineup will be the same on Tuesday, which seems like a really good plan considering how well the new combinations worked on Thursday. Each of the adjusted forward groups contributed a goal against the Coyotes: Vladimir Tarasenko scored thanks to a spectacular assist from Magnus Paajarvi, David Backes bumped one in with a helper from Alexander Steen, and Kevin Shattenkirk scored thanks to a pair of assists from the newly-reunited duo of Jori Lehtera and Robby Fabbri. The defense was also very stout, which was partly thanks to the presence of Petteri Lindbohm, who made his season debut following his recall from the AHL and was a plus-1 in 15:29 of ice time.
The only adjustment will be the insertion of Brian Elliott in net for the meeting with Philadelphia. Elliott figures to get a bit more playing time going forward thanks to his strong effort against the New York Islanders last Friday, during which he gave up just one goal on 25 shots through 65 minutes in goal.
Here’s how the Blues’ lineup is expected to look against the Flyers:
Magnus Paajarvi-Paul Stastny–Vladimir Tarasenko
Alexander Steen–David Backes–Troy Brouwer
Dmitrij Jaskin–Jori Lehtera–Robby Fabbri
Scottie Upshall–Kyle Brodziak–Ryan Reaves
Jay Bouwmeester–Alex Pietrangelo
Petteri Lindbohm–Kevin Shattenkirk
Carl Gunnarsson–Colton Parayko
Brian Elliott
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