Tampa Bay Lightning at St. Louis Blues Game 18

Time: 8:00 pm Eastern Time

Location: Enterprise Center

Broadcast/Streaming: Fox Sports Sun

Opponent SBNation Site: St. Louis Game Time

Preview:

The Tampa Bay Lightning are heading on a short road trip to face two teams from Central Division. The first stop is in St. Louis, against the defending Stanley Cup winning St. Louis Blues. The two teams will meet twice during the upcoming eight days,. On November 27th, the Blues are coming to Amalie Arena. The Lightning are still waiting for their first win of the season over a team from Western Conference. They’ve already lost to Colorado Avalanche, Nashville Predators and recently the Winnipeg Jets on Saturday night.

The Bolts couldn’t continue the winning streak that started in Sweden, but played a solid game against the Jets (despite a poor first ten minutes), which was ruined because of very questionable coach’s challenge in the second period and Connor Hellebuyck who made 31 saves during that game. As of now, the Lightning are the sixth in the Atlantic Division, but have played three less games that most of their opponents.

The Blues have slowed down a little bit recently. They’ve lost their last three games, although they still earned two points during that span. The team still remains in the top group of teams in the NHL with 29 points after 21 games. Vladimir Tarasenko has been placed on LTIR due to shoulder injury and will miss approximately five months. In his absence, Brayden Schenn and David Perron have been very productive with almost a point-per-game rate. Alex Pietrangelo has also had a pretty good start of the season and even deserves to be mentioned in the early Norris Trophy conversations.

It will also be the first time Pat Maroon will play against his former team with which he won the Stanley Cup in June. Kevin Shattenkirk is another Lightning player with some history in St. Louis as he played for the Blues from 2010 until 2017.

With Steven Stamkos reaching his 400th goal mark, we will keep an eye on Andrei Vasilevskiy, who is one victory away from setting the franchise record for most wins by a goaltender in Lightning jersey.

Tampa Bay Lightning

Forward Lines

Tyler Johnson - Brayden Point - Nikita Kucherov

Ondrej Palat - Steven Stamkos - Carter Verhaeghe

Alex Killorn - Anthony Cirelli - Mathieu Joseph

Patrick Maroon - Cedric Paquette - Yanni Gourde

Defense Pairings

Victor Hedman - Kevin Shattenkirk

Ryan McDonagh - Erik Cernak

Mikhail Sergachev - Luke Schenn

Scratched: Jan Rutta, Braydon Coburn

Goaltenders

Andrei Vasilevskiy

Curtis McElhinney

St. Louis Blues

Forward Lines

Jaden Schwartz - Brayden Schenn - Tyler Bozak

Sammy Blais - Ryan O’Reilly - David Perron

Zach Sanford - Robert Thomas - Oskar Sundqvist

Mackenzie MacEachern - Ivan Barbashev - Klim Kostin

Defense Pairings

Colton Parayko - Alex Pietrangelo

Jay Bouwmeester - Justin Faulk

Vince Dunn - Robert Bortuzzo

Goalies

Jordan Binnington

Jake Allen