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Fabbri, Gunnarsson, and Allen are all in. Reaves and Hunt return

November 1, 2018, 3:10 PM ET [4 Comments]
Jason Millen
St Louis Blues Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT


The Blues are hosting the Vegas Knights tonight, looking to get a win and bring their points percentage up to 50%. The Blues have the 2nd worst points percentage in the Western Conference, only better than the dismal Kings.

As we approach tonight's game, Blues fans are likely the happiest they have been all season. With the team fresh off a 7-3 drubbing of the arch rival Hawks, the apparent avoidance of significant injury to Jake Allen in his collision with Zach Sanford and tonight's return of Robby Fabbri and Carl Gunnarsson.

In order to make room for Nikita Soshnikov (now healthy but not playing tonight), Fabbri and Gunnarsson, the Blues assigned Jakub Jerabek (cleared waivers), Jordan Kyrou and Ville Husso to San Antonio.

According to coach Mike Yeo, Kyrou's assignment was not performance based, saying "with the play of a lot of our guys up front right now, it's hard to find more opportunity for him". The simple statistics back up Yeo as Kyrou has averaged seven and a half minutes a game over his last three games. Yeo wants Kyrou to go down and "gain some ice time and just keep moving himself along". Yeo further added "he's got to go down with a positive attitude and, in my eyes, he's much further along than probably what I expected him to be at this point in his career."

The reality is that Zach Sanford took the top 9 ice time that Kyrou could have earned by playing better than Kyrou. The other reality is that Kyrou doesn't translate into a 4th line player like Robert Thomas can which explains why Kyrou was sent down and not Thomas. Also, Kyrou is waiver exempt unlike the likes of Soshnikov, Sundqvist, etc.

Speaking of Sanford, I think it says a lot that Fabbri projects to be on the 4th line tonight while Sanford is still arguably on the number one line. Sure 4th line minutes help protect and ease Fabbri back into real games but Sanford is earning his time with David Perron an Ryan O'reilly. That line was fantastic on Saturday, combing for 2 goals and 5 assists.

In Saturday's game, the Blues held a substantial special teams advantage, scoring two power play goals. They hope to continue that against the Knights tonight, looking to improve on their 5th ranked power play and hoping to keep the Knights dead last in power play efficiency.

The Knights have been "advanced" statistics wizards, acheiving the 2nd best Corsi (3rd using adjusted) and the 2nd best xGF% but this is yet another great example of some of the shortcomings of "fancy" stats as the Knights are only 24th in points percentage.

Jonathan Marchessault leads the Knights with 6 goals and 12 points in 12 games. Newcomer Max Pacioretty has struggled with only 2 goals in 10 games and not even 3 shots per game. Marc Andre-Fleury has looked human with only an 89.7% save percentage.

Blues fans will get to see former Blues' Brad Hunt and Ryan Reaves face their former club tonight.

The Blues expected lineup is as follows:
Schwartz-Schenn-Tarasenko
Sanford-O'Reilly-Perron
Maroon-Bozak-Steen
Fabbri-Thomas-Sundqvist

Bouwmeester-Pietrangelo
Edmundson-Parayko
Dunn-Gunnarsson

Allen

Allen is the confirmed starter and it is confirmed that Ivan Barbashev is the odd man out on the 4th line and that Jordan Schmaltz is the odd man out on defense. Barbashev was the only surprise to me but Yeo said Thomas had his best game of the year and Sundqvist was playing with pace and contributed in the last game so he didn't want to take them out.

On defense, you knew Yeo was going to sit Schmaltz because he needs the minute security should Gunnarsson not be able to go the whole game and he won't give Schamltz 20 or so minutes right now but he will give Bouwmeester those minutes if needed.

NHL Champions for Charity
We’ve gotten some traction on the charity wager among the Central Division bloggers. More on that to come.

It's a great day for hockey.
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