The Oilers have a fella named Connor McDavid that appears to be leading the league in goals, assists and points. Seems good. The Blues should probably cover him.
Schenn will play LW, with the returning Buchnevich at centre, and Tarasenko at RW. It will be interesting to see how Thomas' line plays. O'Reilly and Saad will likely stay together, probably still with Leivo. Will Thomas and Kyrou get Barbashev for their LW?
What an awful way to start a game - a penalty for sending out the wrong lineup, and giving a power play to The League's #1 power play, at 31%, and they score after a few seconds!
The Blues are lucky to come out of The 1st Period tied, given that they made 2 mental errors leading to penalties. But they still face 43 seconds of penalty kill on the fresh ice at the beginning of The 2nd. I hope the play defence as well as they did in The 1st, all game.
Saad is starting to assert his speed and scoring ability more than he ever has in his time with The Blues. That's a good thing. I think he was holding back too much (maybe thinking about being defensively responsible).
Great scoring chance for Thomas in the last second of the 2nd Period. A well-played period by The Blues. They'd be leading 1-0, if not for the screw-up with the lineup, and the bad luck of the puck hitting a leaving-the-ice player's skate. The team seems to be playing a lot differently with Buchnevich and their full complement of defensemen (other than Scandella) back. Let's hope they play this well in The 3rd, and get better puck luck on their shots.