Aleksanteri Kaskimaki intended to make his NHL debut on Monday night against the Anaheim Ducks, but weather-related flight delays \u2014 and a long wait on the tarmac \u2014 prevented that from happening.<\/p>\n
The 21-year-old rookie walked into the press box at Enterprise Center just as the national anthem was being performed in the arena on Monday night, effectively deflating what could have been an exciting night for the newest Blue.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was pretty hard,\u201d Kaskimaki said. \u201cI was getting ready to play, but as soon as I had to stay on the tarmac and the delays kept going, I knew it might not happen\u2026 You\u2019re counting down the minutes when you get off the plane. It happens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kaskimaki\u2019s debut will instead happen on Thursday night in Boston (6 p.m. CT, FanDuel Sports Network, 101 ESPN), where the St. Louis Blues are set to begin a quick three-game road trip that also will take them to Ottawa and Montreal.<\/p>\n
He won\u2019t have any family there \u2014 it\u2019s a long trip from his native Finland \u2014 but that doesn\u2019t make it any less exciting for the Blues\u2019 rookie.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a dream come true, so it was [good to get called up],\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Blues Head Coach Jim Montgomery had Kaskimaki skating on a line with Dalibor Dvorsky and Pavel Buchnevich in practice, and so it\u2019s likely to see that group together on the ice Thursday.<\/p>\n
\u201cHim and Dvorsky have played a lot together in the American League, so there\u2019s familiarity there,\u201d Montgomery said. \u201cAnd Buchy is just a solid veteran that can help those guys offensively and defensively with his 200-foot game. (Aleksanteri\u2019s) energy to be in the NHL is obvious. That\u2019s a good jolt for our team right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kaskimaki was a third-round pick of the Blues pick in the 2022 NHL Draft (No. 73 overall) and is playing in his second season with the Springfield Thunderbirds in the AHL. Through 79 AHL games, he has posted 15 goals and 26 assists (41 points).<\/p>\n
The Blues will also get Pius Suter back in the lineup after he missed two games with a muscle-related lower-body injury. He was back in practice Wednesday and has been declared good to go.<\/p>\n
Jimmy Snuggerud, Alexey Toropchenko and Nathan Walker remain out.<\/p>\n
PROJECTED LINEUP<\/p>\n
Forward<\/p>\n
Brayden Schenn – Robert Thomas – Jake Neighbours
Dylan Holloway – Pius Suter – Jordan Kyrou
Aleksanteri Kaskimaki – Dalibor Dvorsky – Pavel Buchnevich
Mathieu Joseph – Oskar Sundqvist – Nick Bjugstad<\/p>\n
Defense<\/p>\n
Philip Broberg – Colton Parayko
Tyler Tucker – Justin Faulk
Cam Fowler – Logan Mailloux<\/p>\n
Goalie<\/p>\n
Jordan Binnington<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aleksanteri Kaskimaki intended to make his NHL debut on Monday night against the Anaheim Ducks, but weather-related flight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":330491,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[385,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-330490","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-nhl","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330490","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=330490"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/330490\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/330491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=330490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=330490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=330490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}