After dodging injury scares earlier this week, the St. Louis Blues should be closer to full strength when they host the streaking Columbus Blue Jackets on Saturday night.
Two key Blues forwards made quick recoveries ahead of the upcoming game.
Jordan Kyrou and Jake Neighbours departed the 4-3 loss to the Dallas Stars on Tuesday night with injuries. Both were questionable for Thursday’s game with Florida Panthers, along with center Oskar Sundqvist, who was recovering from his leg laceration.
All three played. Kyrou had a goal and two assists in the 5-4 victory over the Panthers. Neighbours and Sundqvist each scored a goal.
While Sundqvist told reporters on Wednesday that he was ready, Kyrou and Neighbours were unsure heading into the Florida game.
“First of all, ‘Sunny’ should have told me. That would have been nice. Glad he’s telling you guys that,” Blues coach Jim Montgomery said. “The other two, it was going to be how they felt (Thursday) morning because it was very positive about how they responded the day after the game. We were very happy with how they were both feeling.”
While top center Robert Thomas remains sidelined with a lower-body injury and winger Dylan Holloway has been ruled out until after the Olympics with his high ankle sprain, center Pius Suter could return from a high ankle sprain on Saturday.
After missing 15 games, Suter wants to make sure he is ready to play for Switzerland at the Olympics.
“The injury takes an amount of time,” Suter said. “You can’t rush it. But it would be nice to get a couple games in. Obviously to also help the team. They’ve been battling hard the last few weeks here, got a nice win [Thursday] and got rewarded for it. We’ve been battling hard for a few games now and had some tough losses.”
While the Blues snapped a five-game winless streak (0-4-1) on Thursday, the Blue Jackets have won eight of their last nine games. Columbus won seven of those games after Rick Bowness took over as head coach after Dean Evason was fired.
“What you can’t do is get comfortable,” Bowness said. “We haven’t done anything yet, and you can never forget that. Yeah, we’ve won a few games. So what? We’re still chasing.”
The Blue Jackets are coming off a 4-2 victory over the Chicago Blackhawks on Friday night behind Charlie Coyle’s hat trick. Bowness made one lineup change for that game, inserting Jake Christiansen for Egor Zamula on defense.
“We talked to [Zamula] again. We’ll show him some video and he’ll be right back in there,” Bowness said. “We’ve got seven defense. We got a lot of games coming up. It’s back-to-back, three games in four nights. So we’ll get them all in.”
The Blue Jackets defeated the Blues 3-2 at home on Nov. 1. Offensive-minded defenseman Zach Werenski recorded a goal and an assist in that game and Jet Greaves made 37 saves.
Elvis Merzlikins drew the start in goal against the Blackhawks, so Greaves should get another shot at the Blues. Greaves is 3-0-0 with a 1.67 goals-against average and a .956 save percentage in his career against St. Louis.
–Field Level Media
