Neighbours, Kyrou departed Tuesday's 4-3 loss to Stars, classified as day to day; Sundqvist, Suter getting closer
MARYLAND HEIGHTS, Mo. -- The news turned out to be better for the St. Louis Blues in regards to two more recently injured forwards.
Jake Neighbours and Jordan Kyrou each departed Tuesday's 4-3 loss to the Dallas Stars to join an ever-growing list of forwards who are sidelined.
Neighbours left after the first period with a lower-body injury stemming from a blocked shot at 9:43 of the first period off the stick of Stars defenseman Esa Lindell, and Kyrou left after the second period with an upper-body injury that stemmed from a collision that resulted in a bloody nose.
"Good news on both," Blues coach Jim Montgomery said. "Day to day. How quickly they're players again shouldn't be long. I don't know if they're players tomorrow. I would say doubtful for tomorrow, but it's good news. it's not going to be week (to week)."
The Blues haven't decided (as of early Wednesday afternoon) if there would need to be any callups from Springfield of the American Hockey League.
"I don't know that part of it," Montgomery said. "We have to see where other guys are at, too."
Those other guys include Pius Suter, who hasn't played since a high ankle sprain Dec. 27 against the Nashville Predators, and Oskar Sundqvist, who took that scary skate cut above the ankle against the Edmonton Oilers on Jan. 18.
Each skated in full on Wednesday.
"With 'Sunny,' I think he had a good day today," Montgomery said. "Don't think he's available for tomorrow, but we don't know. He took some good steps today. (Suter's) getting closer, but he's not available for tomorrow. That's where we're at.
"I don't worry about roster. That's Army and Steener's job."
Here's how the Blues lined up in practice on Wednesday:
Yes, that was Matthew Kessel lined up as a forward with the Blues also missing Robert Thomas (lower body) and Dylan Holloway (high ankle sprain), neither of who skated Wednesday after doing so at the morning skate on Tuesday.
"We don't have a lot of bodies," Montgomery said with a laugh. "Kessel was playing forward today.
"I think we've been dealing with five forwards being injured since November. I'm looking at the positive side of things. We're seeing incredible development in (Dalibor) Dvorsky and (Jimmy) Snuggerud, seeing (Robby) Fabbri getting his confidence. There's a lot of positives coming up out of this. They're getting big minutes, they're getting a lot of power-play minutes, they're getting 6-on-5 minutes. We'd like it to be 5v6 minutes so that we're closing out games, but those are the positives out of what has been happening. We have a lot more players gaining confidence. We're getting (Jonatan) Berggren and looking at him in a top six consistently. Is that someone who can add something to us not only this year but following years? We're getting a lot of looks. We've got (Philip Broberg) playing on the power play now. There's some good development. We just need to make sure we close out games better, whether it's face-offs or attention to detail in certain areas in big moments needs to be better."
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