Blues at Blue Jackets Preseason Preview/GameDay Thread

Tonight marks the Blues’ first road game of the pre-season, and it’s against an opponent that they haven’t seen since November 15th, 2019. Thanks to Covid-19, it’s been almost two years since the Blues have had an opportunity to square off against the Blue Jackets. Jake Allen was still with the team! John Tortorella was still the coach of the Jackets! The Blues were starting their Stanley Cup defense!

Ahh, good times, filled with such promise.

This Blues team, at the start of the season, is going to be a very different squad than that 2019 team. It goes without saying that the preseason team’s something that won’t look a bit like who’s going out on the ice on opening night.

The team’s coaching staff has mixed up who is getting a look tonight. Jake Neighbours and Scott Perunovich are getting their first game off, and fan favorite Dakota Joshua will get a chance to show off the physical play that gave the other prospect squads at Traverse City fits.

Most notably, St. Louis native and recent trade acquisition Logan Brown will be making his preseason debut. Fans have been anxious to see Brown in action, and there will be no missing him on the ice tonight - literally, you cannot miss him. He’s 6’6” and 220 lbs. Between him and Joshua being out there, the Jackets may be in for a more physical game than they were expecting out of a pre-season tilt.

Here’re tonight’s expected lines, from stlblues.com:

Forwards: Ivan Barbashev, Logan Brown, Michael Frolik, Dakota Joshua, Klim Kostin, Jordan Kyrou, Mathias Laferriere, Hugh McGing, James Neal, Matthew Peca, Robert Thomas, Keean Washkurak.

Defense: Tommy Cross, Colton Parayko, Steven Santini, Marco Scandella, Jake Walman, Josh Wesley.

Goalies: Joel Hofer, Charlie Lindgren.

Tonight’s game will only be available on ESPN 101. If you’re out of the St. Louis metro area, you can catch it streaming on stlblues.com, or the NHL app if you have the Blues selected as your favorite team (and obviously, you already do).