New coach, but no major changes yet for St. Louis

ST. LOUIS -- The Blues have had two practices, a full one Monday and Tuesday's morning skate, with new coach ken Hitchcock and haven't noticed too much of a change -- at the outset, at least.

The 59-year-old Hitchcock, who said Monday he doesn't want to change too much until he gets a better grasp of his players, will do some in-game tweaking if necessary.

"Not so much from a systems standpoint," defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk said. "He's really kind of hammering in his fundamentals and what he likes to see in his team and the game they play.

"I think he's coaching that within our systems we have now and how we're playing. He's going to make some tweaks, but we're not going to be seeing a completely different team here tonight."

Said Hitchcock, who will go with the same lineup tonight aside from Ian Cole going in for Taylor Chorney on defense, "For me, the game is the easy part. The 24-48 hours for me, it's changed. It's not changed on the ice. That's the simple part for me."

Cole said Hitchcock won't take long to implement his style.

"I feel he's just observing right now, and in the next couple days, he's going to start ramping it up pretty good ... get back to being the man, the myth, the legend that you hear about," Cole said.

One part of the team's game Hitchcock definitely plans on changing is the dump and chase style.

"I don't like the chip and check game and I think we're doing that a little too much here," he said.

Back to top