Montreal Canadiens @ St. Louis Blues
How to watch
Start time: 7:00 PM EST / 4:00 PM PST
In Canada: CityTV, Sportsnet East (English), TVA Sports (French)
In the Blues region: Bally Sports Midwest
Streaming: ESPN+, NHL Live, Sportsnet Now
The situation isn’t quite so bad that the two teams playing tonight need to lace up their mascots, as pictured on our site’s storystream for today’s game, but Youppi! and Louie should be bringing their skates to the arena every night just in case.
Both the Montreal Canadiens and St. Louis Blues are heavily impacted by COVID and injuries decimating their rosters, with more regulars missing combined than you can count on two (human) hands. And they’re far from insignificant absences, with starting goalies, key defencemen, and top-six forwards out for both sides.
Montreal’s latest injury is to Jake Evans, though it sounds like a minor issue and he’s just day-to-day. There is actually a return this evening, as Joel Armia is back after missing the past week.
The Blues are at least still able to put together a respectable top-six formation consisting of the likes of Vladimir Tarasenko, Ryan O’Reilly, and Brandon Saad, but have had to scour their AHL depth to complete a fourth line for the game, bringing former Habs forward Matthew Peca into the fold for his first game of the year in the NHL. We’re also going to see Charlie Lindgren in goal for the home team, so we’ll see how well the Canadiens learned to break down his defences in all the practices they shared in his time in Montreal.
Montreal Canadiens projected lineup
Forwards
| Left Wing |
Centre |
Right Wing |
| Artturi Lehkonen |
Nick Suzuki |
Mike Hoffman |
| Jonathan Drouin |
Ryan Poehling |
Joel Armia |
| Mathieu Perreault |
Laurent Dauphin |
Cole Caufield |
| Michael Pezzetta |
Cédric Paquette |
Jesse Ylönen |
Defencemen
| Left Defence |
Right Defence |
| Ben Chiarot |
David Savard |
| Alexander Romanov |
Chris Wideman |
| Brett Kulak |
Kale Clague |
Goaltenders
| Starter |
Backup |
| Jake Allen |
Samuel Montembeault |
St. Louis Blues projected lineup
Forwards
| Left Wing |
Centre |
Right Wing |
| Brandon Saad |
Ryan O’Reilly |
Jordan Kyrou |
| Pavel Buchnevich |
Ivan Barbashev |
Vladimir Tarasenko |
| Nathan Walker |
Brayden Schenn |
Oskar Sundkvist |
| Dakota Joshua |
Logan Brown |
Matthew Peca |
Defencemen
| Left Defence |
Right Defence |
| Niko Mikkola |
Colton Parayko |
| Marco Scandella |
Torey Krug |
| Scott Perunovich |
Robert Bortuzzo |
Goaltenders
| Starter |
Backup |
| Charlie Lindgren |
John Gillies |
