Multiple Huge Blues Updates... - This has Major Implications

We get multiple updates from the St. Louis Blues revolving around a few key injuries in particular, and this news has Blues fans split. As there is some good news, there is some bad news, and all of it has major implications on how this team is expected to perform the rest of the way this season. We're going to break down what these injury updates are, what this Blues lineup looks like going into the rest of this week, and much more as this Blues team continues to climb their way up the standings looking to make the playoffs for the first time in two years we're going to break that all down and much more in this episode of Blues Digest but before we get into all of that a quick reminder to hit that subscribe button you notice that a large percentage of you guys who watch these videos on a regular basis are not subscribed to the channel so if you want to stay up to date with everything that's going on with the Blues on a daily basis mark and i got you covered every single day with all the updates quotes from Jim Montgomery and of course what's happening on the ice with some of the players we'll get into that in a second but mark we have a big morning skate update today including a couple injury updates so the Blues first of all have changed their line one thing that we've learned very early on early on in the season second line has been working second line is remain untouched they are not going to touch that now they've made a couple changes to the rest of the lineup because they are sticking with that first line still now you can see um you know a couple changes to the fourth line and some interesting changes more so to the defense score so Mark, you have any thoughts on I mean kind of make sense that you don't touch the forward group too much you hope that the first line is going to get going to a level that we know that they can perform at like we saw at the end of last season for a pretty substantial sample size and then the second line has been unbelievable this year but you keep seeing a lot of changes you keep seeing Theo Lindstein with the team not playing which i don't love i'd rather him just be in the lineup whether it's in the NHL or the AHL but the Blues change up a couple of their lines and we have some big injury updates on the defense corps with Logan Mayyou and on the forward group as well with Tork Trinco because i mean looking at the previous games and of course i just flashed on screen what they used to run and of course some injuries have kind of changed that what we've seen in the past is of course Dubé on the fourth line with Ross Johnson but with Ross Johnson out and Dubé being a scratch in this game we're seeing two new young bucks coming up from the AHL that of course we've seen some time of already especially with Otto Stenberg but Jim Montgomery is praising these young guys quite a bit and looking at Casco Mackey speaking on a 200 foot game how he's super intelligent offensively and defensively he adds to their penalty killing this is a player that's super exciting to join into this team and again diving into Kasko Mackey I'm excited to see he already has two short-handed goals this season in the AHL and again looking at Steve Ott and the way the transition is perfect because he's so on par with what Jim Montgomery runs now of course Jim finally got his full bench that he decided on with Steve Ott going down to the AHL that transition gets easier you have the guys and looking at the fourth line i'm expecting a big game especially with Suter and i've seen a comment saying we hate him there's no shot we hate Pew Suter a swiss army knife no pun intended this is a guy that legitimately is not only a 20 goal scorer someone that's played on top lines from his time dating back to Vancouver during playoff hunts but Pew Suter is someone that adds so much value 25 goals there is 46 points in his final season with the Canucks a perennial both basically 13 plus goal score every single year this fourth line now adding Otto Stenberg's offensive game with Pew Suter that can do a bit of everything and a penalty killer a bigger body in Kasko Mackey I'm excited to see how this unfolds and the fact that we're going to see more guys hungry to stay in the lineup I think that's the trend we're going to see around this team for quite some bit especially with injuries and we got updates on two guys coming through but what is your thoughts on just like this entire team i know a lot of people are kind of mad in the comments when it comes to Jim Montgomery lineups but again he's kept those top two lines pretty solidified not switching them up of course rotating guys based on injuries what are your thoughts on the projected lines because again that fourth line stands out to me quite a bit and i don't think there's many lines in the NHL fourth lines i mean that can match up with that when it comes to size skill penalty killing and just pure offense yeah i think you're right i think they offer a lot and i think that's why it's an exciting opportunity for each one of those players and what they bring we touched on Stenberg yesterday and you know what he brings to a lineup and everything that we saw last year and how exciting of an opportunity early on in the season this is for him to kind of you know put a stamp on this season for himself specifically jim montgomery also hasn't really touched the top three lines which i think is good you have to continue to try and build chemistry i mean you gave that second line a chance and look what's happened with them right they're building a lot of chemistry and you're paying two of those guys a lot of money but Bergeron's contract is not that much money and if he continues to produce the way he is and just give the support to those two other guys the way he is because i don't think he's going to put up as many points as the other two there's also special teams involved in all that type of stuff but if he continues to play the way he's playing that contract is well worth it and we don't hate suitor either it's just you know i think his contract was done on purpose that maybe it makes it a little bit easier to trade him depending how the rest of the season goes and we kind of talked about that last year through the summer a little bit and he's a guy that's a little bit older he doesn't necessarily fit he's a great piece and a swiss army knife but he doesn't necessarily fit the long-term plans of this organization so i think that's kind of the sentiment we share but not to put words in your mouth mark but um you know i think that's kind of the way we see it but he's a great tool for this team to kind of go in and fit in anywhere and do a lot of different things right but right now he's being tasked with being that fourth line center a responsible guy who does still play a lot of minutes 14 minutes a night for a fourth liner um is a lot because you know special teams involved and if you look around the league there's fourth liners that play literally six minutes right so uh he is putting up a lot of work so that's good too now uh the power play not great the penalty kill not bad this year it's been pretty good so if you look at the special teams that is one area of probably improvement for this team as you continue to uh you know head down the rest of this regular season one thing i do want to talk about here is some updates though mark we got an update on logan mayhew and that update uh and Not just Logan Mayhew, but Torbjörn Galeus, but of course Logan Mayhew is a number one defenseman at this point. He's a top-tier defenseman for this team, so he's a huge part of it. He has been skating, but according to Jim Montgomery, he's a long ways away still. Now, we knew that he was going to be out for a significant amount of time to start the year, but this is still a big blow for this team. They need this guy back, and not only that, I don't love what they're doing with the defense lines right now because he got Barron on the top line, and I know why they picked him off waivers And the experience that he brings And that type of stuff Juracek's still in the lineup Which I think speaks volumes to his play How much they like him Stuff like that He's also playing on the off-wing with Pareko Lindstein is not in the lineup And he should be playing, period I don't care where it is But he should be playing He should not be a healthy scratch Eating popcorn in the press box And I think the biggest thing is Looking at Mayu and the timeline Of him being out for quite some time I thought this would be the opportunity Where Theo Lindstein and Adam Juracek Would give that extended look of course if you're losing games and their main causes which they're not you would think okay maybe one guy comes out but I don't get the Theo Lindstein we've seen Jim say this is our best passer on the back end someone that creates offense and the fact he's not in the lineup with Logan Mayhew still sidelined for quite some time I'm hoping that's one aspect that Jim works on is finishing that back end and making sure that we get the young guys if not you need to get them into the A he can't just sit there like you said in the press box eating popcorn every game but looking into some positive things around this team is we got a huge update on Torbjörn coming through from Jim Montgomery great news right now he feels ahead of the schedule and now he's got a doctor's appointment later this week we'll find out if he's able to be plugged back into the lineup so there is some positives of course with this Blues team with updates coming around Darius listen this is a thing with Theo Lansing where you want him in the team do you think there's a world where maybe they send him down to the A at some point or do you think it's just say hey we're waiting for someone to mess up in that defensive core then you're straight back in and maybe Theo's hungrier than ever and never comes out the way I see it at his age he should be playing period I don't care if they think he's too good for the AHL because I could agree with that like I think he should be an NHLer at this point showed us at the end of last season showed us very early on in this season he made the team for crying out loud um he should be playing if he's not gonna play then he should be in the AHL right that's the way I see it but I don't look at it as a demotion he should be playing just in games you you lose something when you're not in real game situations it's one thing to practice like and one thing to play in a game right like if you're just practicing all the time it is not the same guys you're not going 100 they're trying not to get hurt themselves you want to be in those game situations and not having him there i think is really that's hurting his development i think so to me i feel very strongly on that he should be playing no matter where it is or hey just keep him on the team but have him in the lineup he should be playing right and i understand there's like a couple different things and maybe take your check out of the lineup but then if you're doing that he should be playing as well so he should go down like somebody's got to go down here right so just you know pick your poison basically choose who you want to be in the lineup every night and send down the other guys so at least they can get into the game so that's just the way i see it let us know how you feel in the comments below and obviously good news on Porchat so he's going to be coming back soon and should be slotted on the fourth line but until then mark great opportunity for uh stenberg and a couple others like Kaskemaki too. Great opportunity for Kaskemaki because we saw Stenberg last year but Kaskemaki just started the season so hot. It's an exciting opportunity for him.