Follow me on twitter
The Blues completed their 2 game sweep of Canada by defeating the Ottawa Senators 4-1 on Thursday night.
Vladimir Tarasenko opened the scoring a little over 6 minutes into the 2nd period. Tarasenko starts the play behind the net, dishing the puck to Paul Stastny who finds Robert Bortuzzo for the shot from the point. Meanwhile, Tarasenko had worked to the corner to support Stastny with passing options and then drives hard to the front of the net when he sees the puck going back to the point. Tarasenko deftly deflects Bortuzzo’s shot down through Craig Anderson’s five hole.
About 6 minutes later, Alex Pietrangelo extends the lead to 2-0. Vladimir Sobotka enters the Senators zone and feeds Joel Edmundson for a one timer that Anderson has a hard time handling. Anderson tries to knock the puck to the side wall but knocks it too far out toward the blue line and Pietrangelo shoots the puck into a mostly empty net. Interesting that the scorekeeper deemed Anderson’s batting of the puck to be enough to take away Sobotka and Edmundson’s assists.
About 4 minutes later, Brayden Schenn extends the lead to 3. Vince Dunn makes a great stretch pass to Alexander Steen at the Senators blueline. Steen is able to lose coverage after coming on the ice on a line change. Steen finds Schenn driving the net and what would appear to be a pretty harmless backhander gets past Anderson.
The Blues hope this will get Schenn going as he had gone 11 games without a goal.
Bobby Ryan would get one back less than a minute later before Steen closed out the scoring with an empty net goal.
Tonight he Blues will host the Arizona Coyotes who have the fewest points in the NHL, something that is easy to understand as they are the 2nd lowest scoring team in the league and give up the 3rd most goals per game. They are 5-14-3 on the road this season, 2-4-4 in their last 10 and have lost their last 3 games in extra time.
St. Louisan Clayton Keller leads the Coyotes with 14 goals and 34 points in 47 games. No other players have even reached 30 points yet. Oliver Ekman-Larsson is an astonishing -38, not only worst in the league but more than 50% worse than 2nd worst.
The Blues have a plethora of players on fire right now. Carter Hutton has won 5 of his last 6 starts. Paul Stastny has points in 6 of his last 7 games during which he has 9 points. Vladimir Tarasenko has goals in 3 of his last 4 games and points in 4 of last 5 during which he has 6 points. Alexander Steen also has goals in 3 of his last 4 games and has points in 5 of his last 6 games. Alex Pietrangelo has points in 4 straight games.
The Blues hope to keep this trend going against the Coyotes tonight. Carter Hutton is expected to start and has a career 90.5% save percentage and a 2.41 goals against average versus the Coyotes. I find it interesting that coach Mike Yeo is going back to Hutton yet again as Jake Allen has been excellent against the Coyotes in his career, a perfect 7-0 with a 1.00 goals against average and a 96.1% save percentage. If ever there was a team for Allen to get back in net and gain confidence against, the Coyotes would seem to be that team. Yeo instead is choosing to ride the hot goalie.
The Blues have a number of players who have enjoyed a lot of success against the Coyotes. Tarasenko has 5 goals and 14 points in 14 games while Steen has 27 points in 28 games. Schenn has 8 points in 10 games against the Coyotes.
Even on defense, the Alex Pietrangelo and Colton Parayko are almost averaging a point a game, with 20 points in 25 game and 6 points in 7 games.
As to the lines tonight, I expect them to start like this:
Forwards
Ivan Barbashev - Paul Stastny – Vladimir Tarasenko
Alexander Steen - Brayden Schenn – Dmitrij Jaskin
Vladimir Sobotka - Patrik Berglund – Tage Thompson
Magnus Paajarvi – Kyle Brodziak – Chris Thorburn
Defense
Joel Edmundson - Alex Pietrangelo
Jay Bouwmeester - Colton Parayko
Vince Dunn - Robert Bortuzzo
Goalie
Carter Hutton
Jaden Schwartz continues to make strides toward coming back.
It’s a great day for hockey.
Fellow Hockeybuzz bloggers
Nashville Predator's Paul McCann,
Winnipeg Jet's Peter Tessier and
Minnesota Wild's Dan Wallace have generously agreed to a friendly charity wager. We were hoping to do the whole division but don't have it fully represented yet. The blogger whose team finishes the highest the standings at the end of the year gets to pick a charity to whom the others will donate in their name.
St Louis Blues Blogger • 
Join the Discussion:
»