As the St. Louis Blues have lost four of the last five games - in part to falling behind early - Blues Interim Head Coach Drew Bannister intends on making some changes for Wednesday’s meeting with the Edmonton Oilers (7:30 p.m., TNT, MAX, 101 ESPN).
With two games in back-to-back nights on the road, the Blues did not skate on Wednesday morning in Edmonton but they did go to the rink for meetings. After those meetings, Bannister told the media that there would be a few lineup changes — Nikita Alexandrov would play in place of Kasperi Kapanen, Tyler Tucker would play in place of Scott Perunovich and Jordan Binnington would be back in goal.
“If players aren’t going to play the way we need them to, whether it’s missing a shift or sitting out for a period or finding themselves in the stands, that’s the direction we’re going to have to go in,” Bannister said.
Bannister did not elaborate on why he was making a change defensively with Perunovich, but regarding Kapanen, he said “He’s a good hockey player for us, and we need to see more. There’s some instances in the (last) game where I feel like he’s trying to force things, and less is more right now for him. This is a time when he can reset his game a little bit and get back to playing the hockey that we need from him. We can’t have him in the stands, he’s too good of a hockey player.”
Bannister said he will mix the lines around a little bit, although he anticipates the lineup looking similar to how it did on Feb. 15 when the Blues beat the Oilers 6-3 at Enterprise Center.
Below is a guess at what the lineup could look like. It will be updated if additional changes are visible during pregame warm-ups.
