MARYLAND HEIGHTS, Mo. — Nick Leddy was a full participant in practice on Sunday once again, giving the St. Louis Blues some semblance of when the veteran defenseman could make his way back into the lineup.
Leddy has been sidelined since Oct. 15 with a lower-body injury that has forced the 33-year-old to miss the past 21 games.
A sign that Leddy has a chance at playing soon: he’s heading out with the Blues on a nine-day Canadian trip to Winnipeg (Tuesday), Calgary (Thursday), Edmonton (Saturday) and Vancouver (Dec. 10).
“He’s coming on the trip,” Blues coach Jim Montgomery said. “We thought as a staff evaluating him, significant improvement from just two days ago. So he’s progressing the right way; still don’t have a time line.”
Leddy skated in full with the team on Friday after they returned from the Thanksgiving break and again during a morning skate on Saturday; he’s played in just four games but it was evident he was not at 100 percent at the start of the season. But he looked his usual self, particularly with his skating ability these past few days.
“We have told players be cautious around him just because we want him to get comfortable with the pace of everything before we physically start going full bore,” Montgomery said.
* Faulk, Neighbours, Buchnevich miss Sunday practice — Defenseman Justin Faulk and forward Jake Neighbours each sat out Sunday’s final practice before the Blues (11-12-2) depart Monday to face the Jets.
Faulk led the Blues in ice time of a 3-2 overtime loss against the Philadelphia Flyers Saturday at 25:35, while Neighbours helped the Blues get a point by scoring a 6-on-4 power-play goal with 18.3 seconds left in regulation:
“Both maintenance days,” Montgomery said. “Both will be playing.”
Forward Pavel Buchnevich, who briefly skated during Saturday’s optional morning skate, did not practice Sunday and continues to be day to day with a lower-body ijury.
* Broberg return — Montgomery was not going to hold defenseman Philip Broberg back, playing his first game since a right knee injury Nov. 2 against the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Broberg, who missed 12 games, played 24:08, which was second to Faulk, among the Blues’ blueliners and had three shots on goal (five attempts) and one hit.
“I think you could tell he’s someone that’s going to drastically improve the team like he did early in the year,” Montgomery said. “I think there was a little rustiness there, just in how quickly he was doing things, whether it was killing plays or jumping. But I really thought 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 pairing were, for once, the top minutes eaters for the Blues. That had been held for the past month by the Ryan Suter-Colton Parayko pair. Parayko played 21:39 and Suter played 20:30 on Saturday.
“A lot of it has to do with in-game,” Montgomery said. “And also the other two have been playing so many minutes, we want to try and balance some of those out a little bit.”
* Monty working practices — One reason the Blues skated on Sunday and will take Monday off for travel is Montgomery is working in his systems on the fly after being hired one week ago to the day.
It was the Blues’ third full day to practice.
“We’re trying to increase habits in details and a lot of that for practice is you saw the first 25 minutes was a lot of pace, and we were working on speed and puck support with speed,” Montgomery said. “And then we started working on a little bit, it’s almost like a quazi couple of training camp drills where we’re trying to implement a little bit of wrinkles that are a little bit different than the way we were playing previously.”
Montgomery talked after the game Saturday about the Flyers forwards stretching the Blues out and in turn, the Blues weren’t covering over the top that caused issues on the forecheck and tracking back. Forward Dylan Holloway, who had a goal, said the F3’s have to do a better job of reloading because they were getting antsy in the offensive zone and diving in, sometimes aggressively.
“Our first two forwards have to reload so our F3 can be more aggressive and defensemen can be tighter,” Montgomery said. “If our forwards are not above their third forward, it’s impossible for our defensemen to end plays, so the you end up retreating, giving up your own blue line. Now you’re allowing teams to have time and space.
“We did a great job of it in New York. We did a real good job of it in Jersey in the first and third; we did not in the second. And last night, we didn’t do a good job of it in the first two periods, we did a good job in the third.”
