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The Blues had a successful return to the ice after their bye week with a 2-1 overtime victory over the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Alexander Steen scored while the Blues had the goalie pulled with less than a minute left in the game to send the game to overtime and Toronto local Vince Dunn scored the overtime winner.

You can watch the goals here and here.

Carter Hutton played excellent in net, stopping 30 of 31 shots with the loan goal against coming on a short-handed breakaway from Connor Brown.

Jammer’s Game Notes:
- Vince Dunn played more than Carl Gunnarsson and Colton Parayko and led the team in shots- 7.
- Joel Edmundson led all Blues players in ice time with 25:47.
- Edmundson, Alex Pietrangelo and Colton Parayko combined for more than 75 minutes.
- Paul Stastny had 2 assists and the 2nd most forward ice time.
- Steed led all forwards in shots with 5.
- Frederick Andersen played well stopping 95.2% of the shots against.
- Auston Matthews was held without a point keeping the Blues as the only team against whom he has not registered a point.

Tonight the Blues will be in Ottawa to face the Senators. The game will be the first of two that the teams will play in five days against each other. Tonight is the bye week return of the Senators. They had won 3 of their 4 games before the bye. Ironically, both teams last game was a one goal victory over the Maple Leafs.

The Senators have the 3rd fewest points in the NHL and are only 9-8-5 at home, the third worst home record in the league. The Senators have struggled at both ends of the ice, giving up the 3rd most goals per game while scoring at a rate that puts them in the bottom third of the league. Their power play is 4th worst in the league, just one spot better than the Blues who are 3rd worst. Their penalty kill also happens to be 4th worst in the league.

Mark Stone leads the Senators with 18 goals and 42 points in 42 games. Erik Karlsson of course leads the way on defense with 30 points in 37 games. The Senators’ netminders appear to be struggling as both have sub career and sub 90% save percentages with Craig Anderson at 89.9% and Mike Condon at 89.4%.

Anderson has been average against the Blues in his career with a 90.4% save percentage. Erik Karlsson has struggled, for him, with only 7 points in 11 games, well below his career average. Mark Stone has 5 points in 6 games while Mike Hoffman has 4 points in 6 games.

For the Blues, it appears Carter Hutton will get the start again. Hutton has struggled against the Senators with only an 86.7% save percentage and a 3.64 goals against average.

Paul Stastny has 9 points in 10 games and Vladimir Tarasenko has 6 points in 8 games. Alex Pietrangelo has had success against the Senators with 7 points in 11 games.

As to the lines today, I expect them to start like this:

Forwards
Ivan Barbashev - Paul Stastny – Vladimir Tarasenko
Alexander Steen - Brayden Schenn – Tage Thompson
Vladimir Sobotka - Patrik Berglund – Dmitrij Jaskin
Magnus Paajarvi – Kyle Brodziak – Chris Thorburn

Defense
Joel Edmundson - Alex Pietrangelo
Jay Bouwmeester - Colton Parayko
Vince Dunn - Robert Bortuzzo

Goalie
Carter Hutton

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.

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