By Jeremy Rutherford (The Athletic)
There were 22 water bottles lined up on the “home” bench at the Flyers Training Center on Friday afternoon.
The St. Louis Blues aren’t home. They’re on a five-game, 10-day road trip, and following their 3-2 overtime loss to the Philadelphia Flyers on Thursday, they stayed in town another night.
Typically, the Blues wouldn’t have practiced on Friday, which was a day off between their game against the Flyers and their game at the New York Islanders on Saturday. They would’ve just traveled to Long Island on Friday and then held a morning skate on Saturday. But because Saturday’s game is an afternoon start — 2:30 pm. CT — they did get on the ice in Philadelphia.
The Blues had a 45-minute bus ride from their hotel in Philadelphia to the practice facility in Voorhees, N.J. They got suited up, and the first players started trickling onto the rink at 11:20 a.m.
“You’ve got to feel good, get some flow, get some sweat, get some lactic acid out from last night,” Blues coach Jim Montgomery said. “Then we’ll fly out to the Island and get ready for an afternoon game Saturday.”
There were some areas of the team’s game that Montgomery was lamenting after Thursday’s loss, primarily the inability to extend a 2-0 lead to 3-0 or 4-0. In response, the coach has built a 30-minute practice with six drills heavily focused on offense. He comes up with about 80 percent of the practice itinerary himself, then discusses it with his staff, asking his assistants to poke holes in his plan.
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