Devils At Blues Game Preview: Paul Stastny Returns Tonight

Man, that Jake Allen kid's pretty good, huh?

He'll be in net again tonight after a 1-0 shutout of the New Jersey Devils Tuesday night. That was a national game, so it gave the Blues a chance to show off their young new goaltender as well as some guy who did this:

As beautiful as that (and every other goal of his) was, Vkadimir Tarasenko is being relied upon to provide offense. While he's on his hot streak and is contributing like a house a fire, that's fine - but some other guys picking up the pace would be great too. Tarasenko leads the next leading goal scorer, Jaden Schwartz, by three goals, and there are ten players who have yet to find the back of the net.

Thankfully, Paul Stastny is returning to the line-up tonight, so there's that spark for more secondary scoring. That just leaves T.J. Oshie and his concussion as the only missing player. Where Stastny is placed as far as lines go is something different - Hitchcock has threatened to break up Tarasenko and Jori Lehtera by placing Stastny as center on that line. Let's all hope that experiment doesn't happen until after Tank cools off.

The Blues're a strong team, and there's no reason to not think that the rest of the scoring won't increase as this month goes on. They're also a streaky team who can be prone to scoring droughts, so Stastny coming back couldn't happen at a better time. Peter DeBoer isn't too thrilled about seeing the Blues again, especially with Stastny in:

"If I had my choice, I'd choose someone else to play. We'll get back at them. The nice thing is we feel, after [Tuesday], we should be able to play with this team. We know what worked and what didn't work. We have to replicate that in St. Louis."

Look for the Devils to try to contain Tarasenko. Good luck with that, Pete.