Hunter Skinner will make his NHL debut Friday when the St. Louis Blues face off against the Philadelphia Flyers at Enterprise Center (7 p.m., FanDuel Sports Network, 101 ESPN).<\/p>\n
The defenseman is set to take the ice tonight on the third defense pairing.<\/p>\n
“He has poise with the puck, but he’s hard too,” said Head Coach Jim Montgomery. “He plays the game with physicality and emotion, which our team can use.”<\/p>\n
While the experience will be new for Skinner, there will be some familiarity once he takes the ice. He’ll skate alongside Matthew Kessel, a fellow Michigan native and his occasional defense partner in Springfield.<\/p>\n
And the rookie will have a strong off-ice support system present as well. His family – including parents and siblings – made the trip to St. Louis for his debut and will be in the stands when he takes his first NHL shift.<\/p>\n
“It’s a dream come true,” Skinner said. “I’m super excited for tonight.”<\/p>\n
The below projected lineup is based on Friday’s morning skate at Enterprise Center.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hunter Skinner will make his NHL debut Friday when the St. Louis Blues face off against the Philadelphia…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-284567","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}