The St. Louis Blues close out their homestand and a back-to-back set as they host the New York Rangers at Enterprise Center (7 p.m., FanDuel Sports Network, 101 ESPN).<\/p>\n
The Blues are 2-1-0 thus far on the four-game home stretch, including a 1-0 win over the Winnipeg Jets on Wednesday night. The team held an optional skate Thursday morning, but Head Coach Jim Montgomery did share a few updates about tonight’s lineup.<\/p>\n
Here’s what we know:<\/p>\n
It’s Jordan Binnington’s net tonight.<\/p>\n
Binnington will get the nod against the Rangers after three straight starts for Joel Hofer.<\/p>\n
“The team needed a reset, first of all, and he’s been the negative benefitter of our poor play,” Montgomery said. “When we’ve really played poorly, it’s really been in front of Binner… I think [the rest has] given him the opportunity to work and prepare and get back the right mindset that makes him an elite goaltender in this league.”<\/p>\n
Matt Luff draws in for Robby Fabbri.<\/p>\n
After two “excellent” games with the Blues to start his return, Montgomery said Fabbri had “a little less juice in his legs” these last two.<\/p>\n
“It’s a lot,” the coach said. “He wasn’t in a training camp, he’s not in the same hockey shape as everybody else is. So it’s just an opportunity, and Luff’s been really good for us. We’re playing a bigger, heavier team tonight on a back-to-back, a team that’s fresh, so just get a fresh body in. It really wasn’t a negative of anything of [Fabbri’s] play and he’ll be back in the lineup soon.”<\/p>\n
Tyler Tucker will go in for Matthew Kessel.<\/p>\n
Montgomery said Tucker was sore on Wednesday, leading to Kessel getting the call on defense. With a back-to-back and both defensemen playing well, Tucker will now re-enter the lineup against the Rangers.<\/p>\n
Full lines and defense pairings will be updated at warmups.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The St. Louis Blues close out their homestand and a back-to-back set as they host the New York…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":356636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-356635","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\/356635","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=356635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/356636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}