Lightning At Blues Game Preview: NBCSN National Broadcast Alert

Tonight's game is one of the many national broadcast games on NBC or NHL Network that the Blues will be featured in. This, of course, means a GameCenter Live Blackout, but if you have a cable subscription (and aren't at home, or whatever) you can watch the game here on NBCSN's website.

The team will be getting Robby Fabbri back tonight, and he has told Jeremy Rutherford that he's in tip-top shape and ready to go.

"I feel as good as I did before the injury," he said. "That's a good sign. I'll try to carry that into tonight. ... The biggest thing is to catch up where I left off and keep building, keep improving every game, every day."

With Paul Stastny and Jaden Schwartz both out with injury for the foreseeable future, chances are good that Fabbri will be asked to help out on the power play, which is an abysmal 1 for 18 their last 4 games. It would be remiss to judge the Blues' special teams with so many key players missing, but the rough penalty killing and lack of production on the power play isn't beneficial to the Blues.

One player that you won't see tonight is Ty Rattie, who is currently the 13th forward. Scottie Upshall has been playing well, but it is still surprising that there isn't a way to get an offensive player into the line-up when the Blues are playing a team with Tyler Johnson and Steven Stamkos on it.

Jake Allen gets the start tonight. Allen is 1-2 on the season with a higher than expected 3.02 GAA and a .899 save percentage. Brian Elliott, who won both games against the Lightning last year, is backing up tonight thanks to a touch of the flu bug that Scottie Upshall probably suffered from Saturday night.

Tonight's projected lines at this Oktoberfest game (though Oktoberfest is in September, but whatever) are these, from the Blues' official site;

Forwards
Steen - Lehtera - Tarasenko
Jaskin - Backes -Upshall
Fabbri - Gomez - Brouwer
Ott - Brodziak - Reaves

Defense
Bouwmeester - Pietrangelo
Gunnarsson - Parayko
Edmundson - Bortuzzo

Goalie
Allen

Ben Bishop is in net for the Bolts. Their lines are as follows:

Jonathan Drouin - Steven Stamkos - Ryan Callahan

Ondrej Palat - Tyler Johnson - Nikita Kucherov

Alex Killorn - Valtteri Filppula - J.T. Brown

Vladislav Namestnikov - Brian Boyle - Erik Condra

Defense:

Victor Hedman - Anton Stralman

Braydon Coburn - Andrej Sustr

Matthew Carle - Jason Garrison

Goaltenders:

Ben Bishop

Kristers Gudlevskis