(10-29-26) Bruins-Blues Gameday Lineup

ST. LOUIS – The voices were loud from St. Louis Blues fans after a 2-0 loss to the Montreal Canadiens on Tuesday, the second straight game the home side was shut out.

Instead of looking at the whole process, the result was everything the fans were looking at. In the end, it was another loss that puts the Blues at 5-6-1 to begin the season with a fifth and final game of this homestand against the Boston Bruins (9-3-1) at 7 p.m. today (Blue Note+, ESPN 101.1-FM).

The Blues are without a goal in the past 123:55 and blanked in back-to-back games for the first time since Nov. 17-19, 2018. It’s never happened in three straight games.

But in that locker room, the Blues are sticking to their process of playing a system that suits their style, and they accomplished a lot of what they wanted on Tuesday except win the game, outshooting the Canadiens 46-20 and a deserved to win meter according to moneypuck.com at over 64 percent, but being blanketed by Jacob Fowler in goal.

And then there's this from naturalstattrick, which had the Blues at a 56-36 advantage in Corsi-for and 20-8 advantage in high danger Corsi-for/against.

“I understand fans are … we have great fans,” Blues coach Jim Montgomery said. “I understand that they want wins, they want results. We do too. If we get focused on results though, things can spiral negatively in a long season. It’s (84) games. If you start off 0-3 in football, you’re cooked in the NFL. It’s hard to come back from that. In our season, it’s about you’ve got to progress during the journey, and we’re seeing us progress. We’re not trying to find silver linings in the fact that we’re 5-6; we think we should be better than that, but we’re not, so how do we get better within the way that we have been playing and how do we score more goals? How do we draw more penalties? Those are the things we’re looking at. But I completely understand from a fan’s perspective that they want results.

“I just think two of our last three games, we’ve been a very dominant team. The fact that we only have six goals in those three games, a little disappointing. The middle game was not good enough, so my mind goes to we are generating a lot more offense than we were earlier in the year. Defensively, we’re doing a really good job off the rush; we’ve still got to tighten covering the slot better defensively and then mostly just consistency. Two of the last three games, two of them are really good hockey games played by our team and one’s not. Can’t have that kind of inconsistency. Trying to get more consistent.”

The players feel the same. Their 4-0 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes was a result of simply getting beat by a better team, a team that is coming off a Stanley Cup championship. Going back to last week, look at the result and process of a 6-2 win against the Vegas Golden Knights, the defending Western Conference champion.

It’s why the process matters.

“Yeah, I think so,” Blues defenseman Colton Parayko said. “I think a lot of good things. At the end of the day, it is results and it’s on us throughout practices and everything to make sure we’re bearing down and doing our best to be around the net scoring goals, that’s D-men included. It’s not just forwards, it’s everybody. We’re out there as five-man units, we’re playing an aggressive style this year where a lot of D-men are jumping up and they’re allowing us ‘D’ to be in the zone, so it’s on us to make sure we’re practicing the right way as D-men and we’re making sure we’re trying to contribute and stuff like that. But as a whole as a game, I thought it was great. Turnovers to puck battles to net front to odd-man rushes. We had it all in our favor. Of course whenever you get that in a game, you should give yourself a really good chance to win, but at the end of the day, you’ve still got to put some pucks in the net.”

Added Blues forward Jake Neighbours, “There’s a lot of things to like about (Tuesday), a lot of chances that probably should have gone in. Sometimes you run into a hard goalie, but sometimes, you’ve got to bear down and put our chances in the upper half of the net and and win those scrambles, making sure to get pucks up and finish them. But like you said, we’re a process-oriented team, that’s how we’ve been for the first 12 games this year regardless of how we’ve played or the results. That’s one of those ones (Tuesday) where probably we deserved a better fate but you come into work (Wednesday), get better and go back at it (today).”

It’s why they have to stick to what they’re doing with the belief that the results will follow, whenever that is.

“If players believe in the process and everybody coaches and everybody’s in it together seeing it the same way, which we are, there’s a lot of times last year where we didn’t and as a coach, that’s way more alarming,” Montgomery said. “But right now, we believe in the process. I don’t know, I watch Nick Saban and he believes in the process. I watch Bill Belichick, he believes in the process. I watch Pat Riley, he believes in the process. I’ve talked to Scotty Bowman, I’ve talked to … there’s a belief in how you need to play. There’s a consistency in what you look like. Now we’re starting to see what we look like consistently, so the results are going to be dependent on us getting a little greasier at the net front.”

So that’s why Neighbours has a simple message to the fans.

“I would just encourage them and to remember that there's 72 games left in the season,” he said. “This is a group with a lot of new faces that's only played 12 games together. From someone who's been here 4-5 years now, the feeling that we've had this early in the season about when we're at our best how good we play has been a different feeling. It seems this team has a different tone to it and when we're going at our best, it's a different feel. It's like we can truly play with anybody. We took it to the Eastern Conference finalists from last year last night. Obviously they're missing some guys but that game wasn't even close territorially. I would just encourage them to remember that there's a lot of games left in the season and I would encourage them to watch too. I think if you would have watched the game last night, you would understand we did everything we could to try and put her in the back of net. Sometimes you run into nights like that, but I don't know if there's much else I can say. Be like us, stick to the process and it's coming.”

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The Blues will switch up their top three forward pairings in the hopes that there will be some results as far as offense, moving Neighbours up with Robert Thomas and Jimmy Snuggerud, Pavel Buchnevich with Mason McTavish and Jonatan Berggren and flanking Dalibor Dvorsky with Dylan Holloway and Connor McMichael.

“This is the most patient I’ve been as a coach with my lines,” Montgomery said. “It’s 12 games where basically you’ve seen the same lines. It’s 10 percent of the season now, might be 15, I’m not good at math. … The Thomas line, they’re not producing like they were last year. Last year was like a 16-18 game sample where they really took off, right? So we’re almost at that number. Same thing with the McTavish line, they started out good; last five games, I think they have one goal. It’s time to make changes to see if there’s a spark. That’s why we’ve mixed up the top three lines.”

So what are the coaches looking for with the changes?

“We’ve got twosomes primarily on every line,” Montgomery said, “and we’re just looking for a spark. Maybe there’s chemistry that’s going to happen on one of the lines. We’ve fluffed the lines the same for 12 games and we haven’t produced at the level that we should be. The analytics say we should be scoring more than we should be, but more importantly, we’re not sustaining the kind of chemistry we would like from our lines creating offense.”

As far as players starting to grip sticks and keep them from getting frustrated pucks haven’t gone in, the coaches have a simple message.

“It’s a hard league, so you just keep going back to work,” Montgomery said. “It’s what we’re paid to do, is to work at a sport we love. So we go back to work.”

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Blues Projected Lineup:

Jake Neighbours-Robert Thomas-Jimmy Snuggerud

Pavel Buchnevich-Mason McTavish-Jonatan Berggren

Dylan Holloway-Dalibor Dvorsky-Connor McMichael

Alexey Toropchenko-Pius Suter-Aleksanteri Kaskimaki

Philip Broberg-Brandon Carlo

Cam Fowler-Colton Parayko

Justin Barron-Adam Jiricek

Joel Hofer will start in goal; Jordan Binnington will be the backup.

The healthy scratches include Otto Stenberg and Quinton Burns. Logan Mailloux (hand), Tyler Tucker (knee), Dillon Dube (neck) and Ross Johnston (lower body) are out.

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Bruins Projected Lineup:

JJ Peterka-Pavel Zacha-David Pastrnak

Marat Khusnutdinov-Fraser Minten-Morgan Geekie

Casey Mittelstadt-Elias Lindholm-James Hagens

Tanner Jeannot-Matthew Poitras-Mark Kastelic

Hampus Lindholm-Charlie McAvoy

Nikita Zadorov-Will Borgen

Mason Lohrei-Connor Clifton

Jeremy Swayman will start in goal; Michael DiPietro will be the backup.

Healthy scratches include Jonathan Aspirot, Sean Kuraly and Frederic Brunet . The Bruins report no injuries.

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