In the final preseason game, the St. Louis Blues got dealt a blow to their defense. Logan Mailloux fractured his right hand in a fight and was initially set to miss eight weeks. It has been six weeks, and the Blues defenseman was just activated by the team, according to Jeremy Rutherford of The Athletic.
In corresponding moves, the Blues reassigned both Adam Jiricek and Theo Lindstein to the Springfield Thunderbirds and recalled Calle Rosen.
Logan Mailloux’s Return Comes During Disappointing Stretch
The Blues went 1-2-1 on their last road trip and are 0-2-1 in the month of November. The team is returning home on Tuesday to get right before they hit the road again on Thursday.
St. Louis’s defense has been middle of the pack in allowing goals, with 3.1 going in per game. The more worrisome statistic for St. Louis is that the team is allowing the ninth most shots in the league. Those shots rack up, and the goals will, too.
17 games into the season, the Blues are still growing, with a lot of new pieces needing to build chemistry. Mailloux’s return should help the Blues’ defense begin to stabilize. Losing both Tyler Tucker and Mailloux before the season put St. Louis short on experienced depth at the blue line.
Their two young promising defenseman, Lindstein and Jiricek, will return to Springfield with things to work on. The depth is beginning to return to St. Louis with Mailloux’s appearance on the ice. With more home games than road games this month, November is the perfect time for the Blues to get right and find a rhythm.
Blues Returning Defenseman Practices With First Line
Upon his return, Mailloux was skating with the first pair in the Blues’ defense during Monday’s practice. His partner was Philip Broberg, who has established himself as a game-changer for St. Louis this season.
At the end of last season, Mailloux and Broberg began playing together and built solid chemistry with each other. During training camp and the preseason, it seemed as though the pairing would carry over before Mailloux’s injury.
The Blues are excited to get Mailloux back on the ice and in the game with Broberg. After Mailloux went down with an injury, head coach Jim Montgomery spoke about his progression and improvement during camp.
“That’s a pretty significant loss just because he was playing so aggressively, trusting his instincts, taking away time and space, impacting the game at both ends of the ice,” Montgomery told Lou Korac.
Mailloux finished the season with 13 points last year, 10 of them coming in the final two months of the season. Last year was the defenseman’s first season spending most of his time in the NHL. Before coming to St. Louis from the Montreal Canadiens, Mailloux had appeared in just eight NHL games.
Mailloux’s play will be an important factor in the Blues correcting course and getting back into the thick of it in a deep Western Conference.
Blues Logan Mailloux Returns To Action After Missing 6 Weeks