Blues bringing dads on road trip to Boston, Buffalo

The Dad's Trip.
It's one of hockey's best traditions, one where players that have reached the pinnacle of their sport get to share the experience with their fathers - the men who made it all possible by working overtime to pay for expensive gear and enrollment fees or getting up early and driving long distances for practice and youth hockey tournaments.
Twenty Blues players will be bringing their dads (or father-in-laws) on the road later this week when the team travels for a two-game road trip to face the Boston Bruins at TD Garden (Thursday at 6 p.m. CT) and the Buffalo Sabres at Keybank Center (Saturday at 6:30 p.m.)

The Blues have done this twice before in their history.
And they haven't lost once.
In 2015, Blues players secured wins for their dads in Carolina and Washington, D.C. In 2016, the dads enjoyed victories over the Florida Panthers and Tampa Bay Lightning to improve to a perfect 4-0 record.
Will the dads be 6-0 after Saturday's game in Buffalo?
That's certainly the goal.

"We want to put on a good show for them," Blues captain Alex Pietrangelo said. "Maybe (their perfect record) is just good luck, good kharma, I don't know what it is. When players have family in town, everybody wants to play well in front of them. Every single one of us knows that our dads put in a lot of time and effort when we were kids to help us get us to this point. We don't want to let them down."
Not only will the dads get to watch the games from a suite in each arena, but they will also join their sons on the team plane and at the team hotel. Away from the rink, they'll enjoy dinner with the coaches and team management in Boston and in Buffalo, they'll have a gameday lunch at Anchor Bar, where it's said the buffalo wing was originally invented.

"It's awesome. You wouldn't want them here all the time, sometimes they're opinionated," Pietrangelo joked. "But it's fun to see the camradarie, not only what they have with each other but what we we have with each other's dads.
"I don't think a lot of us really thought about their sacrifices when we were kids, but now that some of us do have kids and guys are going through it, you really understand the effort it took to have a normal job and have us be involved in hockey," Pietrangelo added. "We're always forever grateful and we're excited. Having our dads around just puts a smile on everybody's face."
The trip is sure to produce memorable moments both on and off the ice, which you can follow daily beginning Wednesday at stlouisblues.com or through the Blues' social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Here is a list of players who are bringing their dads along this year:
Jake Allen (Kurt Allen), Patrik Berglund (Anders Berglund), Robert Bortuzzo (Oscar Bortuzzo), Kyle Brodziak (Brian Soldan), Jay Bouwmeester (Dan Bouwmeester), Vince Dunn (John Dunn), Joel Edmundson (Bob Edmundson), Carl Gunnarsson (Bjorn Gunnarsson), Carter Hutton (Jack Hutton), Dmitrij Jaskin (Alexej Jaskin), Alex Pietrangelo (Joe Pietrangelo), Brayden Schenn (Jeff Schenn), Zach Sanford (Michael Sanford), Paul Stastny (Burt Fowler), Alexander Steen (Thomas Steen), Chris Thorburn (Mark Thorburn), Colton Parayko (Tom Parayko), Jaden Schwartz (Rick Schwartz), Vladimir Tarasenko (Andrei Tarasenko) and Scottie Upshall (Scott Upshall).