Detroit Red Wings At St. Louis Blues Game Preview

Tuesday night’s 4-1 loss to the Calgary Flames and Brian Elliott was beyond avoidable. The Flames are not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good team - but they have the Blues’ number so far. Don’t argue the 1-1 split; the Blues nearly blew a three-goal lead in the third period of last Saturday’s game. Was this the proverbial taking the foot off of the gas? Yep. Did they forget where the gas was on Tuesday night? Hell, they weren’t even in the car.

The Blues are usually more than capable for getting up for a game against their old rivals, the Detroit Red Wings. The games don’t seem to have as much hatred anymore since the Wings moved to the Western Conference, but there’s still residual contempt. That’s more than what we can say about how the Blues feel about the Flames, so perhaps the spark will be there tonight for St. Louis.

The Wings are off to a very good 5-2-0 start so far this season. The Blues are close to that, with just one overtime loss to the Vancouver Canucks. Losing in OT seems to be the Blues’ specialty with Detroit, with that happening for the last three straight games. Pavel Datsyuk, a major reason that the Blues seem to lose in OT to the Wings, is in the KHL now.

The line-up for tonight looks a little bit different. Bortuzzo is back in, and Lehtera will be playing wing with Schwartz centering him and Vladimir Tarasenko.

Forwards

Robby Fabbri - Paul Stastny - Alexander Steen

Jori Lehtera - Jaden Schwartz - Vladimir Tarasenko

David Perron - Patrik Berglund - Nail Yakupov

Dmitrij Jaskin - Kyle Brodziak - Ryan Reaves

Defense

Jay Bouwmeester - Alex Pietrangelo

Robert Bortuzzo - Kevin Shattenkirk

Joel Edmundson - Colton Parayko

Goalie

Jake Allen