by MARYLAND HEIGHTS, Mo. – Nick Leddy was a full participant in practice again Sunday, giving the St. Louis Blues a glimpse of when the veteran defenseman might return to the lineup.
Leddy has been out since Oct. 15 with a lower-body injury that forced the 33-year-old to miss the last 21 games.
A sign that Leddy has a chance to play soon: He leaves with the Blues for a nine-day Canadian trip to Winnipeg (Tuesday), Calgary (Thursday), Edmonton (Saturday) and Vancouver (December 10).
“He comes from travel,” Blues coach Jim Montgomery said. “As a team evaluating him, we thought it was a significant improvement from just two days ago. So he’s progressing in the right direction; we still don’t have a timetable.”
Leddy skated in full with the team Friday after they returned from Thanksgiving break and again during a morning skate Saturday; he only played four games, but it was obvious he wasn’t 100% at the start of the season. But he looked his usual self, especially with his skating abilities these past few days.
“We’ve told the players to be careful with him just because we want him to feel comfortable with the pace of everything before we physically start playing full throttle,” Montgomery said.
* Faulk, Neighbors and Buchnevich miss Sunday practice – Defenseman Justin Faulk and forward Jake Neighbors each missed Sunday’s final practice before the Blues (11-12-2) leave Monday to face the Jets.
Faulk led the Blues in a 3-2 overtime loss to the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday at 25:35, while Neighbors helped the Blues secure a point by scoring a 6-on-4 power play goal with 18.3 seconds left in regulation. :
“Both days of maintenance,” Montgomery said. “Both will play.”
Forward Pavel Buchnevich, who skated briefly during Saturday’s optional morning skate, did not practice Sunday and remains day-to-day due to a lower-body injury.
* Return of Broberg — Montgomery was not going to retain defenseman Philip Broberg, who was playing his first game since injuring his right knee on Nov. 2 against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Broberg, who missed 12 games, played 24:08, which was second to Faulk, among Blues defensemen and had three shots on goal (five attempts) and one hit.
“I think it’s safe to say he’s someone who’s going to improve the team significantly like he did at the beginning of the year,” Montgomery said. “I think there was a little rust there, just in how quickly he was doing things, whether it was killing plays or jumping. But I definitely thought that in the third period , we really started to see him go north with the puck and use his feet to defend or add numbers to the offense.
The Broberg-Faulk duo was, for once, the best minute eater for the Blues. This had been held for a month by the Ryan Suter-Colton Parayko pair. Parayko played 9:39 p.m. and Suter 8:30 p.m. on Saturday.
“A lot of it depends on the game,” Montgomery said. “And the other two have played so many minutes that we want to try to balance some of them out a little bit.”
* Monty’s work practices — Part of the reason the Blues skated on Sunday and will take Monday off to travel is because Montgomery is working on his systems on the fly after being hired a week ago to the day.
It was the Blues’ third full day of training.
“We’re trying to increase our habits in the details and a lot of it for training, you saw the first 25 minutes were very fast, and we were working on speed and supporting the puck with speed,” said Montgomery. “And then we started working a little bit, it’s almost like some training camp drills where we’re trying to implement a little bit of wrinkles that are a little bit different than how we played before.”
Montgomery spoke after Saturday’s game about the Flyers forwards stretching the Blues and, in turn, the Blues not covering the top, which caused problems on the forecheck and follow-through. Forward Dylan Holloway, who had a goal, said the F3s had to do a better job of reloading because they were getting nervous in the offensive zone and diving, sometimes aggressively.
“Our first two forwards need to recharge their batteries so our F3 can be more aggressive and our defenders can be tighter,” Montgomery said. “If our forwards don’t get past their third forward, it’s impossible for our defenders to end plays, so you end up retreating, abandoning your own blue line. Now you allow teams to have time and space.
“We did a great job in New York. We did a great job in Jersey in the first and third; we didn’t do it in the second. And last night we didn’t do a great job in the first two periods, we did a good job in the third.”
