Alexey Toropchenko will not be in the lineup on Saturday when the St. Louis Blues visit the Calgary Flames on Saturday afternoon (3 p.m. CT, FanDuel Sports Network, 101 ESPN).<\/p>\n
Toropchenko did not skate with the team on Friday before it left to begin a two-road trip. Blues Head Coach Jim Montgomery originally said Toropchenko was \u201csore\u201d and \u201cquestionable to play\u201d Saturday, citing both upper and lower-body injuries. He was ruled out before pregame warmups on Saturday.<\/p>\n
With Toropchenko absent from practice, Montgomery had Alexandre Texier skating on the third line with Jake Neighbours and Pius Suter, while Mathieu Joseph shifted to the fourth line with Nick Bjugstad and Nathan Walker. It\u2019s possible those lines will be used Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cTexier [filled in] last year a handful of times,\u201d Montgomery said. \u201cHe just provides more offense because of his skillset. He provides o-zone time because of his elite puck protection skills. We\u2019re hoping we get a little more push there. It gives us the potential for three scoring lines.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Blues will be looking for their first win of the season after a disappointing season opener on Thursday vs. Minnesota.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to see a dogged determination (Saturday), where there\u2019s almost a scowl on your face when the game begins because you\u2019re not happy with the way [the season] started,\u201d Montgomery said. \u201cAny team that wants to be really good in this League, losing two in a row isn\u2019t something you accept or even tolerate. The start of (Saturday\u2019s) game is going to be important to see where we\u2019re at in the process.<\/p>\n
Joel Hofer is expected to start in goal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alexey Toropchenko will not be in the lineup on Saturday when the St. Louis Blues visit the Calgary…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217454,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":["post-217453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}