Jordan Binnington (bottom) and the St. Louis Blues will look to make it four straight wins on Saturday against the Los Angeles Kings. (Jeff Curry-Imagn Images)ST. LOUIS – On Saturday, the St. Louis Blues (28-26-6) and Los Angeles Kings (31-18-8) will get to know each other quite well.
Almost in a sense of a playoff-like feel in the middle of the regular season, well.
When the puck drops at 7 p.m. (FDSNMW, ESPN 101.1-FM) at Enterprise Center on Saturday, it will be the first of three games between the Blues and Kings over the next eight days.
The teams will play Wednesday and on March 8 in Los Angeles.
“The challenges are it’s hard to beat a team three times in that short period of time because you get to know each other and it becomes a little bit of bad blood over time usually,” Blues coach Jim Montgomery said. “But the good part is, is that you get the focus as a player on who you’re going against because usually the matchups end up very similar and you get a little bit of a playoff mentality. You’ve got to win your battle to help your team win the game and your battle might be your matchup, it might be face-offs, but every little detail becomes more emphasized and more important. That’s where as a team, we still need to grow.”
The Blues are as hot as they’ve been all season, winners of three straight (for the first time this season) and 4-0-1 the past five games and entering Saturday, sat three points out of the second wild card in the Western Conference.
The Kings are coming off a 6-2 loss on Friday against the Dallas Stars and have dropped two straight (0-1-1).
“A team that plays really tight hockey,” Montgomery said of the Kings. “They’re five together in every zone. They check, very similar to who we just played in Washington with their man on man coverage and a little bit different when the puck’s low. And then offensively, they’re heavy at the net. They’re very good with their puck management. They make good plays off the rush. They don’t beat themselves.”
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The play of certain players of late hasn’t certainly gone unnoticed, particularly with the point streaks put together by Robert Thomas (eight games; 12 points, four goals, eight assists) and Pavel Buchnevich (five games; one goal, seven assists).
Was it as simple as allowing bumps and bruises to heal?
Probably.
The team was able to get nine days to rest and recuperate for the 4 Nations Face-Off.
“I think when you get in the grind of the season, the aches don’t get to heal,” Montgomery said. “Very rarely are players playing healthy. There’s always something wrong, and the two weeks off allowed bruises and the aches to heal, so you naturally heal. There’s a lot of juice in the tank, but now we’re in the middle of six in nine days and then we’re going to have some break and then we’re going to go right back to a couple of sets of six in nine. When there’s a compounding of games coming up and not the proper recovery time is when the aches and bruises … you don’t have as much juice in the tank. But everybody is going through it. Everybody has anywhere from 58-60 games played. So everyone’s got the condensed schedule. It’s about your mental capacity to play tired and execute when you’re tired now.”
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Other than Jordan Binnington starting in goal, the Blues will keep the same lineup as far as skaters are concerned that have played the past three games.
Blues Projected Lineup:
Jake Neighbours-Robert Thomas-Pavel Buchnevich
Dylan Holloway-Brayden Schenn-Jordan Kyrou
Mathieu Joseph-Oskar Sundqvist-Zack Bolduc
Alexey Toropchenko-Radek Faksa-Nathan Walker
Cam Fowler-Colton Parayko
Philip Broberg-Justin Faulk
Ryan Suter-Nick Leddy
Jordan Binnington will start in goal; Joel Hofer will be the backup.
Healthy scratches include Alexandre Texier and Tyler Tucker. The Blues report no injuries.
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Kings Projected Lineup:
Alex Turcotte-Anze Kopitar-Alex Laferriere
Kevin Fiala-Quinton Byfield-Adrian Kempe
Warren Foegele-Phillip Danault-Trevor Moore
Tanner Jeannot-Trevor Lewis
Mikey Anderson-Vladislav Gavrikov
Joel Edmundson-Drew Doughty
Jacob Moverare-Jordan Spence
Brandt Clarke
David Rittich will start in goal; Darcy Kuemper will be the backup.
Healthy scratches include Kyle Burroughs and Akil Thomas. The Kings report no injuries.