By Brad Lee
Another home game, another open thread. Game is only on Center Ice or KMOX, so we doubt many will be filling up the comments during the game, but feel free to come back and dissect tonight's effort after the game.
Blues employee Andy Strickland is reporting on the rumor monger's Web site that Willem Dafoe has thrown a few names in the hat again and come up with some new line combinations...and a few old ones.
Boyes, McDonald, Perron
Kariya, Tkachuk, Mayers
Stempniak, McClement, Backes
King, R. Johnson, Hinote
Interesting combinations. We've been a big fan of the Jay and the Americans line in the past, you know, before they forgot how to score goals. Mayers kind of looks out of place on the second line, really leading us to hope that rumors of a defenseman trade for a forward will happen at some point. Mike Johnson joins Matt Walker at the press box buffet line (according to Blues employee Strickland) and we would expect Legace tonight with back-to-back games Thursday and Friday.
Let us know what you think about the line combinations and then come back for the game and post-game breakdown.
Now that we're into January and these games seem to be a little more meaningful, we'll try to be here in this lane of the Super Information Highway (that's a term we haven't heard for awhile) posting our brains out hoping the Blues don't break our hearts early in the calendar year.
UPDATE: Jeremy Rutherford with his Morning Skate blog mentioned this tidbit about releasing information early about the Blues' lines:
The Blues’ lineup is the same tonight as Friday’s lineup, but as I’ve mentioned before, I’m sometimes not at liberty to print the lines in the afternoon at Andy Murray’s request. I think it’s safe to say, though, that you haven’t seen these combinations much this year.
I did jot down the Blues power-play units at Monday’s practice.
No. 1: Kariya, McDonald, Backes, Boyes and Brewer
No. 2: Tkachuk, Stempniak, Perron, Backman and E. Johnson.
It's interesting that a Blues employee would break that embargo.