"Very excited, as anyone would be," Bortuzzo said. "This is the Stanley Cup Final Game 5, we're playing in a storied building, so just happy to come in and hopefully contribute."
Bortuzzo, a healthy scratch in Game 4 when the Blues won 4-2 to even the best-of-7 series, has scored two goals in 15 games during the Stanley Cup Playoffs. He was paired with Vince Dunn during practice Wednesday, and Edmundson skated as an extra with Michael Del Zotto.
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Edmundson played 7:24 in Game 4 and had two hits and two giveaways. He has seven points (one goal, six assists) in 21 playoff games.
"We've got a lot of good depth back there," Blues coach Craig Berube said Thursday. "We like to use our guys quite a bit. We took [Bortuzzo] out and put [Dunn] in and when we looked at that with [Dunn] we weren't sure him coming in first game, so we kept another lefty in there. But I thought he had a real good game, [Dunn], and if we can have a righty-lefty combo it's nice. So we'll put [Bortuzzo] back in."
The Blues have eight healthy defensemen, and seven have played in the postseason (Del Zotto has been scratched throughout the playoffs). Bortuzzo scored in a 3-2 overtime win in Game 2 and played 9:39 in Game 3, but he was scratched when Dunn returned from an upper-body injury that caused him to miss six games.
"It keeps guys fresh, but within games too, it's interchangeable," Blues defenseman Alex Pietrangelo said. "It gives us a break when guys are out there for special teams. It's just chemistry, camaraderie, reading off each other, having been together for a while. It definitely makes things easier too. We do it up front more often than people realize and keeping guys fresh throughout a game. Everybody wants to be in this situation. Everybody wants to be playing."
