Tonight at 7:00 p.m. ET, the St. Louis Blues (36-11-5, 79 points) and Carolina Hurricanes (24-20-9, 57 points) hit the ice at the PNC Arena in North Carolina for the second and final meeting this season. The game can be live streamed here. St. Louis fans can hear all of the action on KMOX 1120 while Carolina fans can do the same on 99.9 The Fan.
St. Louis enters play on the back of a three-game winning streak while Carolina had its streak of four wins in a row snapped last time out. The first time these two teams met, the Blues beat the Hurricanes 4-2 in St. Louis on Nov. 16.
The Blues have a deep enough lineup that Ken Hitchcock has a lot of flexibility in switching his line combinations around, something he feels is an advantage.
"I think, depending on the game, depending on the score, that's the flexibility we work with," Hitchcock said, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "We did it against the [New York] Islanders a little bit, we did it a couple of shifts against the [New York] Rangers. I think you're going to see constant movement there all year."
The Hurricanes are coming off of a 3-0 road loss to the Montreal Canadiens Monday which halted their winning streak. They sent Cam Ward down to the Charlotte Checkers of the American Hockey League for a conditioning stint.
"I think it's important that he's going to go down and play a couple of games with Charlotte," coach Kirk Muller said via NHL.com. "I think that will be great for him for the big reason that health-wise ... this is his first practice that he's had, so we gave him the net for the full 40 minutes to get the timing and endurance back."
Without Ward, Anton Khudobin is the likely starter, and he is 11-4-0 with a 2.24 goals-against average and a .925 save percentage while Jaroslav Halak will likely man the crease for St. Louis and is 23-7-3 with a 2.23 GAA and a .915 save percentage.
St. Louis has been paced by Alex Steen, who scored the game-winning goal the first time these two teams met and has missed the last few practices but is due to play. Steen has 45 points off of 27 goals and 18 assists while T.J. Oshie has 12 tallies and 30 helpers for 42 points and David Backes has found the twine 17 times and added 22 assists for 39 points.
Eric Staal has led Carolina with 44 points off of 14 goals and 30 assists while Jeff Skinner has 22 markers and 15 helpers for 37 points and Andrej Sekera has five assists and six points in his last five games and a total of eight goals and 22 assists for 30 points.
The Blues look for their fourth win in a row while the Hurricanes try to start on a new winning streak when the lights come up at PNC Arena in North Carolina tonight.
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