Blues Announce 23-Man Roster For Opening Night

I tried predicting the opening night roster, and I was close-ish. Note the "ish."

The Blues have released their opening night roster, and it does not include first round pick Robby Fabbri, who has been returned to the Guelph Storm of the OHL. I had expected him, based on how long he hung around, to at least get a cup of coffee at the NHL level as an experiment, but no dice for Fabbri.

Chris Butler and Petteri Lindbohm were sent to the Chicago Wolves; the Blues will be carrying seven defensemen including the injured Carl Gunnarsson. Number seven right now looks to be - you guessed it! - Ian Cole. Butler will probably be up temporarily while Gunnarsson recovers from his hip injury.

The pleasant surprise (but probably not really a surprise) is that Joakim Lindstrom will be starting the year with the Blues. The rest of the opening roster isn't a shock, except that Chris Porter has gotten the nod over Dmitrij Jaskin, who will be starting with Chicago. The reasoning behind this is more than likely that Porter is better suited to the third and fourth line role and is damn good at it, while watching Jaskin on the fourth line would probably give people a heart attack.

Speaking of players who we occasionally watch on the fourth line, Magnus Paajarvi, despite a meh pre-season, will stay with the squad. Press box pretzels can't eat themselves.

Here's the roster, from STLBlues.com:

Forwards: David Backes, Patrik Berglund, Maxim Lapierre, Jori Lehtera, Joakim Lindstrom, T.J. Oshie, Steve Ott, Magnus Paajarvi, Chris Porter, Ryan Reaves, Jaden Schwartz, Paul Stastny, Alexander Steen, Vladimir Tarasenko

Defense: Jay Bouwmeester, Ian Cole, Carl Gunnarsson (injured), Barret Jackman, Jordan Leopold, Alex Pietrangelo, Kevin Shattenkirk

Goalies: Jake Allen, Brian Elliott