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The Blues will start the 2013-2014 season on October 3rd against their division (whatever it's called) rivals, the Nashville Predators. October will be a busy month for season ticket holders and the guys who write the Game Time paper, with seven home games, three of which are on a Friday or Saturday night. The Winnipeg Jets will make their first visit to Scottrade since relocating from Atlanta on October 29th, the second meeting between the two clubs that month. Someone probably needs to start thinking up Evander Kane and Ondrej Pavelec jokes now. I'm sure the guys at Arctic Ice Hockey can help out with the latter. Kane himself can probably help with the former. Just keep your eyes peeled on his Twitter.
The current Cup champions, the Chicago Blackhaws, visit early in the season on October 9th, and don't come back again until December. Most of the home games against the Blues new divisional rivals seem spread out, which is by virtue of not having to shove everything into a truncated period of time. Ahh, the leisure of a lengthened schedule.
The Eastern Conference returns this year, because I'm sure that everyone's missed the Florida Panthers. If you have, good, because they'll be the first Saturday night opponent for the Blues on October 5th.
Saturday, December 21st, marks the first time that the Blues will see David Perron in Oiler orange and blue. As an added treat, which doesn't matter because we're not in Canada, it's the second game of a HNIC double-header.
Fifteen of the games will be nationally broadcast, including five in April. Methinks someone's hoping for some playoff spot drama at the end of the season. Two of those games will be against the Minnesota Wild, so those'll do wonders for the Blues' national viewership, I'm sure.
It doesn't look like the Blues will be run ragged with back to back games.They have two in October, November, January, and March, with one in December and one in April. One of the October ones has travel from Vancouver to Nashville, and December's is between Ottawa and San Jose. Other than that, it's not bad.
The Blues also only have one extended road trip, with games at Detroit, New Jersey, the Rangers, and the Islanders between January 20th and January 25th.
All in all, it's a pretty fair schedule for the Blues. Amazing what happens when you have a full season to play, isn't it? You can download the Blues schedule from their official site.