The St. Louis Blues will welcome veteran winger Brandon Saad back to the lineup for their home opener Tuesday against the Minnesota Wild.
Saad, who scored 26 goals last season, missed the Blues’ opening three-game road trip while awaiting the birth of his third child.
“I’m excited,” Saad said. “Obviously missed the trip and need to get up to game speed. I felt good in camp, was skating here, working out while they were gone. You miss a couple days of that with the delivery, but otherwise I feel ready to go.”
Saad will start on the first line with center Robert Thomas and winger Jake Neighbours when the Blues take the ice Tuesday. Blues coach Drew Bannister didn’t hesitate to throw him into a primary role during Monday’s practice.
“I really liked (Saad’s) training camp and what he did, not only in the practices, but in a couple of (preseason) games he played,” Bannister said. “So let’s see if we can find some chemistry there.”
With forward Alexandre Texier landing on injured reserve an upper-body injury, winger Zack Bolduc remained on the second line with Pavel Buchnevich at center and Jordan Kyrou on the right.
Saad’s return allows Bannister to build a third line with Dylan Holloway and Mathieu Joseph flanking center Brayden Schenn.
“I think that third line is going to be a real good line for us now,” Bannister said.
St. Louis went 2-1 on its opening trip, scoring comeback victories over the Seattle Kraken and San Jose Sharks before coming up short with a rally against the Vegas Golden Knights on Friday.
Minnesota is coming off a 2-1 overtime road loss to the Winnipeg Jets on Sunday, which came on the heels of their 5-4 shootout loss to the Kraken at home Saturday.
Wild coach John Hynes was pleased with his team’s response in the second of back-to-back games.
“I thought that the competitive nature of the group, the battle in a fatigue state, I’ve got a lot of time for,” Hynes said. “I told the team it’s about a culture and a mindset, mental toughness and physical toughness. I thought we had that (Sunday), and at a high level. Coming in, we knew it was going to be a hard road game.”
Hynes believes fatigue impacted the Wild most on the power play.
“You’re going to have to play hard at your net front, in the corners,” he said. “When pucks go in, you have to battle hard. I thought five-on-five we did a lot of that, but that late power play, it does affect you at times when you look at how the schedule is set up, a 7 p.m. and 5 p.m. game back-to-back. To me, I don’t really think the power play didn’t get the job done. I think it was a difficult circumstance and we just couldn’t find a way to make a play in that situation.”
Wild forward Joel Eriksson Ek (broken nose) and defenseman Jared Spurgeon (lower body) sat out the game in Winnipeg. The Wild hope to get Eriksson Ek back against the Blues.
–Field Level Media
