Preview/GameThread for St. Louis Blues at Washington Capitals, Nov 23, 2016

T.J. Oshie has been out week to week with an upper body injury, so Brett Connolly has been given a chance to scoot up the depth chart. This is, obviously, good news for the Blues (though bad news for Oshie - get better soon, Teej!). What is not good news for the Blues is that Braden Holtby is seriously on his game. He has a 1.99 GAA and a .927 save percentage.

But the Blues are riding a four game winning streak, has a solid fourth line, and is finding the way to right the ship after early missteps like the ones they suffered against the Bruins. The discombobulation of the past month of rough play seems to be fading, and this is a good thing.

Unfortunately, the Blues' third line has been underperforming:

"The player’s not relevant," Hitchcock said. "The line’s relevant. We need better play. We need more sustained pressure on the forecheck. We need more participants as far as the line goes. We just need flat better play. In fairness, to (Kyle) Brodziak’s line, they saw a window of opportunity from an ice-time standpoint and they took advantage of it. In reality in the last three or four games they’ve really become our third line."

So who will be on Bergie's right hand side tonight? Heck, who cares - we finally have Vladimir Tarasenko and Paul Stastny together! Here're tonight's lines:

Forwards

Jaden Schwartz - Paul Stastny - Vladimir Tarasenko

Robby Fabbri - Jori Lehtera - Nail Yakupov

David Perron - Patrik Berglund - Dmitrij Jaskin

Scottie Upshall - Kyle Brodziak - Ryan Reaves

Defense

Jay Bouwmeester - Alex Pietrangelo

Carl Gunnarsson - Kevin Shattenkirk

Robert Bortuzzo - Colton Parayko

Goalie

Carter Hutton

This is your GameDay Thread. Comment like you're excited to see 26 and 91 together.

Let's do this. Let's Go Blues.