Golden Knights At Blues Preview: Like making a trade

The Blues are sliding thanks to a three-game losing streak. They’re no longer tops of the Central - the Colorado Avalanche have passed them by for right now (which is not surprising, considering their insane +29 goal differential). You can only keep up appearances for so long when you have five of your regular forwards out to injury. The power play has been slipping in effectiveness, the Blues have only scored four goals in their last three games, and they look tired. They look like the walking wounded.

In Brayden Schenn’s case, he literally is. Yeeeesh, talk about a close shave:

Thankfully a medical disaster was avoided on Tuesday evening in Buffalo, and the Blues’ medical woes are improving overall. Alexander Steen, Oskar Sundqvist, and Zach Sanford all skated with the team today and according to Lou Korac, at least one of those three - Sundqvist - will be returning tonight. That should add some consistency to the lines that the team has been missing since Sundqvist and then Sanford went down.

The Blues historically play the Golden Knights well. By “historically,” I mean over the last two seasons. Last year they swept the season series 3-0, and they’re 4-0-2 overall. The Golden Knights are fresh off of a shellacking of the Chicago Blackhawks 5-1 Tuesday night and are 5-1-1 in their last seven games. Four of those wins came without Marc-Andre Fleury, who was on family leave due to the unfortunate passing of his father. They’re in the second wild-card spot, but it would be unfair to snooze on them.

The Blues need a win to snap them out of their injury-induced funk. There’s not a lot to worry about right now unless you can magically heal players, so patience is your friend. The NHL waits for no recovery, though, so the Blues still need to have the tenacity to get back to stringing together wins.