St. Louis Blues Aim for Undefeated Dad’s Trip Sunday vs. Tampa Bay Lightning
The St. Louis Blues will aim to finish off their brief Florida road trip 2-0 as they face the Tampa Bay Lightning on Sunday evening.
After one of the most impressive victories of the season on Friday against the first-place Florida Panthers, the St. Louis Blues will shoot for a two-game winning streak on Sunday evening as they travel to face the Tampa Bay Lightning. After scoring five goals against Tampa, the most they’ve scored in nearly a month (the last time they scored five was on January 18 vs. Pittsburgh), the Blues will hope to keep their offensive surge going in their second game with forward Jaden Schwartz back in the lineup. That’d certainly be a momentum-builder for a Blues team that had scored just 10 goals in seven games prior to Schwartz’s return Friday.
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A victory Sunday would give the Blues the opportunity to go undefeated on their two-game “dad’s trip”, during which most of the players’ fathers have accompanied the team and participated in meetings and other activities. After an undefeated dad’s trip last season during the inaugural event, the Blues have the opportunity to improve to a combined 5-0 with fathers in the house on Sunday. It’d certainly be another great reason to make the event a tradition for many years to come, not to mention the fun that it’s created for the players, their dads, team staff members, and even fans who are following along with the events from afar thanks to the continued chronicling of the trip on the team’s website.
The Blues’ lineup will have a decidedly different look than it did last time they faced the Lightning on October 27 at Scottrade Center. At that point, Kevin Shattenkirk, Paul Stastny, and Jaden Schwartz were all injured, though the Blues did have the good fortune of having the now-injured Steve Ott, Alex Pietrangelo, and Jake Allen healthy at the time. Center Scott Gomez, who was released by the Blues in late December, scored the only goal of his brief Blues tenure during that game. Troy Brouwer added an empty-netter with 41 seconds left to lift the Blues to a 2-0 victory over Tampa.
As the Lightning head into Sunday’s game, they’re not exactly living up to their reputation as the defending Eastern Conference champions. They sit fourth in the Atlantic Division with a 30-20-4 record, and if the playoffs started today they’d just narrowly earn a Wild Card spot. Prior to a 4-3 overtime victory over the Nashville Predators on on Friday, the Lightning had dropped their last two.
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Considering that Ken Hitchcock has tended to use freshly-recalled players ahead of longer-tenured ones when given the opportunity this season–for example, playing Jeremy Welsh ahead of Ryan Reaves, Jordan Caron ahead of Scott Gomez, Andre Benoit instead of Chris Butler, and Butler ahead of Robert Bortuzzo–it wouldn’t be too surprising to see him insert veteran Peter Harrold, recalled earlier this week, into the lineup on Sunday at Tampa. The most likely scenario would involve Harrold drawing into the lineup ahead of Robert Bortuzzo, who has usually been the team’s seventh defenseman at full health this season and was a minus-1 with three hits in 16:06 on Friday.
There could also be lineup changes among the forward corps, as Friday’s healthy scratches, Magnus Paajarvi and Dmitrij Jaskin, could match up well against Tampa’s finesse, highly-skilled lineup. Scottie Upshall and Ryan Reaves would seem to be the logical candidates to sit if either Paajarvi or Jaskin enter the lineup.
Next: Breaking Down All the Blues' Injuries in 2015-16
Here’s how Sunday’s lineup could look:
Jaden Schwartz-Jori Lehtera-Vladmir Tarasenko
Patrik Berglund-Alexander Steen-David Backes
Robby Fabbri–Paul Stastny–Troy Brouwer
Scottie Upshall–Kyle Brodziak-Ryan Reaves
Jay Bouwmeester–Kevin Shattenkirk
Carl Gunnarsson–Colton Parayko
Joel Edmundson–Peter Harrold