ST. LOUIS - New day, new game, and possibly, new-look lines.
With Andrew Mangiapane (undisclosed, day-to-day) set to miss tonight’s matchup in St. Louis, the forward group will see a bit of a shakeup (confirmed lines and pairings to come during warmups) compared to the past few games.
On the backend, Oliver Kylington will be a game-time decision which could create some additional changes.
But change isn’t always a bad thing.
“You can look at the last few games, they have been a lot of the same lines and we haven’t got the results we wanted,” Head Coach Ryan Huska said. “So, it’s an opportunity to switch a few things up.
With the Flames set to wrap up the road trip against the Blues, the shuffling of lines will also create a chance to kickstart the offence again.
Chances have been there but with just two goals in the past couple games, they know it’s time to turn those into results.
"I think the rope you have to walk when you’re in stretches where you’re not scoring is you can’t cheat the game to try to generate offence,” Huska said. “That’s something that’s important for us to make sure we do it the right way, because our opponent tonight is a very good transition team. So, if you’re not doing things the right way, you open yourselves up and we don’t want to do that here tonight - we want to make sure we’re staying with how we expect our team and ourselves to play, and we feel that when we do it the right way, the chances will be there and then it’s just a matter of finishing.
“They play fast and that’s where we go back to our cheating for offence and that’s not something we want to do. What we’re going to look to do is not give them a lot off the rush and making sure we’re playing smart with the puck and doing a good job with our details.”
