Blues at Canucks GameDay Thread: Puck pressure

The Blues have something to build on - namely a confident, strong 4-1 win against the Canucks on Monday night. Tonight, the only thing that’s different (other than the venue and start time - buy some coffee!) is that Robert Bortuzzo is in for Niko Mikkola.

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

Forwards

Saad - O’Reilly - Perron

Buchnevich - Thomas - Tarasenko

Barbashev - Schenn - Kyrou

MacEachern - Walker - Toropchenko

Defense

Leddy - Parayko

Scandella - Faulk

Rosen - Bortuzzo

Goalie

Husso

Ville Husso turned in a masterful performance on Monday - can he do it again tonight? There’s not much to point to no.

Craig Berube wants to see more of what he saw on Monday, and frankly, so do fans. The defense was sharp and on it.

“For me, it’s the forecheck and the reloading,” Berube said of Monday’s game, a 4-1 Blues victory. “And how tight our D were. When your D are tight like that, hammering walls — and because of your forwards reloading and being above things — they can do that. That makes it tough on the other team.

“The game’s about managing the puck and doing a good job with it. You’ve gotta be able to create to score goals. You’ve gotta do it the right way. And the other part of it, when you don’t have the puck, it’s puck pressure. You’ve gotta put pressure on the other team to make mistakes. Not give ‘em opportunities, not give ‘em time and space.”

Will we see that tonight? If you can stay awake for a late Western Canada start, it’s more than likely that we will.

This is you GameDay Thread. Comment like you’re here for some rough and tumble hockey.

Let’s do this. Let’s Go Blues.