The St. Louis Blues are a red hot hockey club right now. They will play seven of their remaining ten games on home ice.
Derek Roy has missed the past two games for the St. Louis Blues with a lower body deal. He'll return tonight just in time as the Minnesota Wild host Matt Moulson and the Minnesota Wild.
Roy will center a line with Brenden Morrow on the left and Steve Ott on the right.
Hitch is looking for responsible play from this line. He wants them winning pucks and holding on for chances in the attack zone.
Call it the "Show Me" Line. All three vets are pending UFAs. There's no guarantee that the Blues will be retaining one, two, or three of the free agents. If they want to earn a contract with the Blues moving forward, they are going to have to show Hitch that they mean business.
"The line that we're playing together with Roy on it has played three times together before (tonight) and all three games they've played really well together," Blues button pusher Ken Hitchcock told Blues TV. "It's three veteran guys that know how to read off each other. Obviously Ott takes a lot of the faceoffs and ends up down low in our zone.
"I want to see (Morrow-Roy-Morrow-Ott) play consistently well before we evaluate whether we're going to stay with it or not. I'm not 100-percent sure yet. They've shown flashes where they play really well together and then for whatever reason, mostly through injuries or whatever, it's mostly gotten broken up or we've needed help somewhere else."
The Blues (49-16-7) enter play Thursday one point ahead of the Stanley Cup runner up Boston Bruins in the race for the Presidents' Trophy. The Bruins host the Stanley Cup Champion Chicago Blackhawks tonight.
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