Bruins at Blues projected lines: Leddy returns

The last time that the Boston Bruins were in St. Louis, it was the 2019 Stanley Cup Final. Both teams look very different now. Boston is without Zdeno Chara and Tuukka Rask, two long time Bruins whose departure changed the team’s core deeply.

The Blues are without their Cup winning defensive pairing of Alex Pietrangelo and Jay Bouwmeester, perhaps the biggest difference between now and 2019. But there are many many more, if you look at tonight’s lines from stlblues.com:

PROJECTED LINEUP

Forwards

Saad - O’Reilly - Perron

Buchnevich - Thomas - Tarasenko

Barbashev - Schenn - Kyrou

Joshua - Brown - Walker

Defense

Scandella - Parayko

Leddy - Faulk

Krug - Bortuzzo

Goalie

Husso

No Jaden Schwartz. No Carl Gunnarsson. No Oskar Sundqvist. No Vince Dunn.

New since 2019 are Brandon Saad, Pavel Buchnevich, Dakota Joshua, Nathan Walker, Logan Brown, Marco Scandella, Nick Leddy, and former Bruin and 2019 opponent Torey Krug,

This is a very different Blues team, one who may not be defensive stalwarts, but one with enough offense to have them rolling for ten games straight. It’s not 2019 anymore, but 2022’s looking pretty good.