Preview Blues at Senators: How About Another

Tonight at 6:30 pm CT the Blues take on the Senators in Ottawa. Thankfully the game is back on FSMW because the NBCSN broadcast sucked last night. The last time these two teams met the Senators handed the Blues a 6-4 loss at home.

After a defensive battle last night against the Flyers the Blues look to continue the momentum the gained in the 2-0 shutout win.

Thanks to the stellar play of goalie Carter Hutton the Blues once again find themselves sitting in the final wildcard spot despite being tied with the ninth placed Flames at 57 points apiece.

Tonight the spotlight will again be on the Blues top line of Stansty, Steen and Tarasenko. Much to the jubilation of Blues fans head coach Mike Yeo has seemed determined to give his line combinations time to gel together instead of the constant juggling we have grown accustomed to.

Yeo’s patience with the Blues new lines even after being outshot 11-1 in the first period against Philadelphia was rewarded when his team was able to grind out a couple second period goals from Stastny and AHL call-up Kenny Agostino. Hopefully proving that, despite being over halfway through the season, his players still need to build some chemistry.

“We rope-a-doped them a little bit in the first period,” Yeo said. “What we talked about after the first was that we were defending fairly well, but we were just defending way too much. Whether that was a case of thinking too much or just not executing well enough — I think probably a little combination of both — give the guys credit. We found our legs in the second period and started to get on top of things.” [StL P-D]

Yeo has not named his starting goalie yet but it is believed that due to the team playing on back to back nights Jake Allen will be in net. It has been customary in the past if a goaltender gets a shutout then they get the next nights start, however, Mike Yeo has made it clear that Allen is the team’s number 1 and that he is determined to get Jake as many starts as possible.

Ottawa is coming off a terrible 4-0 loss against Buffalo on Saturday night which ended with every Senator except two finish in the minus column and their starting goalie get pulled midway through the third period.

The Senators are sitting at second place in the Atlantic division, trailing the Montreal Canadians by eight points. They are 2-2-1 in their last five games with losses coming from Calgary, Florida and Buffalo and wins against Washington and Tampa Bay.

They have been playing a pretty even game with an average 2.7 goals for and 2.7 goals against. Good enough for 18th and 14th place, respectable, in the NHL.

Their 83.1 percent penalty kill ranks 10th in the league.

Projected Starting Lineup:

Forwards

Steen-Stastny-Tarasenko

Schwartz-Berglund-Jaskin

Agostino-Lehtera-Perron

Upshall-Barbashev-Reaves

Defense

Bouwmeester-Pietrangelo

Gunnarsson-Shattenkirk

Edmundson-Parayko

Goalie

Jake Allen