The St. Louis Blues are going back with Jake Allen in goal Thursday after he sat out the previous three games. Allen has struggled recently and has been pulled in three of his past five starts. "There's just some things technically that we want to see him get a little bit better at and we saw those in the last two practices," coach Ken Hitchcock said. "If we didn't see that, quite frankly we wouldn't have played him. We wouldn't put him out there until we see those things. But we saw them and I think our confidence that they're going to really impact the way he plays and get back to where he was in the first 20 games, we think he's capable of doing that." The Blues want to get right wing Vladimir Tarasenko, who has been held without a goal for five straight games, going and will play Dmitrij Jaskin on the left wing to provide some strength for Tarasenko with Jori Lehtera at center. "We need to be consistently a better checking team and create more space for ourselves in zone," Hitchcock said. "Our feeling in playing Jaskin is in four of the last five games he's played awful well and he's created space for whoever he plays with. We had this line together in the last Washington game [4-3 loss Nov. 23], and it was a very good line for us; probably our best line. When we started watching the tape, it just tweaked us in saying, 'We need the line that [Tarasenko] plays on to be a better line for us,' and this gives it an opportunity to have a little bit different type of onset where it can maybe control the puck a little bit more in the offensive zone rather than just be a rush-attack line."
