Game #16: Tampa Bay Lightning (6-5-4) at St. Louis Blues (7-5-1)
Time: 8:00 PM EST
Location: Enterprise Center
Broadcast/Streaming: BSSUN, BSMW, ESPN+PP, TVAS
Opponent’s Site: Blue Note Hockey
Preview
The Lightning and Blues meet each other tonight both from the middle of the NHL standings, but potentially going in different directions. The Lightning are coming off losses to Carolina and Chicago and have allowed 4+ goals against in six of their last seven games. The Lightning have been leaving a lot at the doorstep of their goalies, Johansson and Tomkins, who have done about as well as you could muster, but haven’t been given the best effort from their teammates.
The Lightning are struggling to put the defensive system together and work as a five-man group. I’m confident in Cooper and co to get the buy-in from the forwards to back check and be hard in all three zones. A more difficult problem is assessing whether the defenders need tweaking within the roster or external changes. The Lightning have already traded depth defender Zach Bogosian to Minnesota, while Erik Cernak has come down with a day-to-day injury following the Canes game. Is the depth sufficient? Do they need a top-four guy to help ease the burden down the lineup? Is this the third season of me proposing for a prime Ryan McDonagh replacement?
On the Blues end, they’ve been a very low scoring team this season, but that scoring popped up in a big way when they beat the Avalanche 8-2 on Saturday night. Was that an aberration, or a sign of things to come? At the very least they’ve been playing more high event hockey in the past week.
I’m going to bring up the Blues power play here because it has been incredibly bad to start this season. 7.7% conversion rate, meaning 3 power play goals, in 13 games, on 39 power play opportunities. What surprises me more is there are other teams also in single digits, Philadelphia and Washington both at ~8%. Okay a second thing that surprises me even more is the fact that the Blues had only one power play goal going into the Colorado game and scored two that night. That’s how cold they were!
With Erik Cernak out of the lineup, Philippe Myers makes his season debut on the third pair. The forward lines look to be unchanged.
Andrei Vasilevskiy took to the ice for the first time since his surgery, practicing with the team. He won’t be back immediately, but he is ahead of schedule. He seemed over the moon to be able to skate with his teammates again.
Stats Match-Up
| Game #16 | Tampa Bay Lightning | St. Louis Blues |
| Overall Record | 6-5-4 | 7-5-1 |
| Home Record | 4-2-2 | 5-2-0 |
| Road Record | 2-3-2 | 2-3-1 |
| Goals For | 53 | 37 |
| Goals Against | 54 | 36 |
| xGF | 48.9 | 39.1 |
| xGA | 49.7 | 41.9 |
| Power Play | 31% | 8% |
| Penalty Kill | 85% | 75% |
Lineups and Goalies
Tampa Bay Lightning Projected Lines
Forwards
Brandon Hagel – Brayden Point – Nikita Kucherov
Steven Stamkos – Nick Paul – Alex Barré-Boulet
Tanner Jeannot – Anthony Cirelli – Michael Eyssimont
Tyler Motte – Luke Glendening – Waltteri Merelä
Defenders
Victor Hedman – Nick Perbix
Mikhail Sergachev – Darren Raddysh
Calvin de Haan – Philippe Myers
Goalies
Jonas Johansson
Matt Tomkins
via Gabby Shirley from practice
St. Louis Blues Projected Lines
Forwards
Pavel Buchnevich – Robert Thomas – Kasperi Kapanen
Brandon Saad – Brayden Schenn – Jordan Kyrou
Alexey Toropchenko – Kevin Hayes – Jakub Vrana
Samuel Blais – Oskar Sundqvist – Jake Neighbours
Defenders
Nick Leddy – Colton Parayko
Torey Krug – Justin Faulk
Marco Scandella – Scott Perunovich
Goalies
Jordan Binnington
Joel Hofer
