Carolina Hurricanes at St. Louis Blues: Lineups and Game Discussion

The Carolina Hurricanes continue their road trip with their only visit to the Gateway to the West and a matchup with the St. Louis Blues on Election Day. An early candidate as one of the most pleasant surprises in the NHL, the Canes have recently trended down in their race to fill a playoff seat in the Metropolitan Division. The struggles that began at their home base in Raleigh have only continued as they have gone out on the campaign trail and faced defeat in each of their first two contests of the current four-game whistle stop tour.

Ok, enough election-charged rhetoric (mostly because I just ran out of coherent connections). The Canes are in desperate need of a win against the Blues, and it appears they will turn again to Curtis McElhinney in net, who has not appeared since October 20th. McElhinney is 3-1 since joining Carolina, including 2-0 on the road. Offensively, the Canes will look to get some semblance of scoring to return. Even the golden goose, Sebastian Aho, has come up empty in his past two games as he snapped his 12-game points streak with a pair of zeros. Below is the projected lineup that Rod Brind’Amour will look to snap the skid with:

Warren Foegele - Jordan Staal - Justin Williams

Micheal Ferland - Sebastian Aho - Teuvo Teravainen

Jordan Martinook - Lucas Wallmark - Andrei Svechnikov

Brock McGinn - Nicolas Roy - Valentin Zykov

Jaccob Slavin - Dougie Hamilton

Calvin de Haan - Justin Faulk

Trevor van Riemsdyk - Brett Pesce

Curtis McElhinney

Scott Darling

The Blues enter action on Tuesday coming off of a dismal performance against the Minnesota Wild, falling 5-1 last Saturday. As such, the Blues are expected to mix their lineup up this evening as Coach Mike Yeo seeks to jumpstart his club now that they have fallen below NHL .500 in the ultra-competitive Central Division.

Chad Johnson will be in net, so the Canes will get another shot at a backup netminder. Perhaps they will be able to have greater success this time around. The other notable change is the bumping of Ryan O’Reilly up to the top line in place of the injured Brayden Schenn. The rest of the projected lineup is below:

Jaden Schwartz - Ryan O’Reilly - Vladimir Tarasenko

Robby Fabbri - Robert Thomas - David Perron

Zach Sanford - Tyler Bozak - Alexander Steen

Patrick Maroon - Ivan Barbashev - Oskar Sundqvist

Vince Dunn - Alex Pietrangelo

Joel Edmundson - Jordan Schmaltz

Carl Gunnarsson - Colton Parayko

Chad Johnson

Jake Allen