It was a special (teams) kind of day for the Blues

Sunday practice consisted of power play, penalty kill work; 

Tarasenko, for now, starts off on second unit after long layoff

By LOU KORAC
MARYLAND HEIGHTS, Mo. -- It was all special teams all the time for the Blues on Sunday.

Well, maybe not all of it, but most of it, aside from the 15 minutes or so of endurance skating at the end, which is never fun, but it helps the conditioning.

(St. Louis Blues photo)

Brayden Schenn takes a shot during training camp earlier this week. He

said the Blues have a 1A-1B power play unit, and they worked it Sunday.

With power play time comes figuring out here to put Vladimir Tarasenko, who returns after missing almost nine months since a dislocated left shoulder Oct. 24.

And the verdict is, for now, Tarasenko will start off on the second unit.

He'll be lined up with Colton Parayko, Robert Thomas, Tyler Bozak and Sammy Blais, which means the top unit will remain Ryan O'Reilly, David Perron, Brayden Schenn, Jaden Schwartz and Alex Pietrangelo.

"The first unit had great success this year," Blues coach Craig Berube said. "The power play overall had great success, third in the National Hockey League. I wanted to keep it the same for now and see how it looks. It's just a start. Who knows how things go and things change.

"You've got Vladi, who's a great player coming back in the lineup, but that power play unit did a tremendous job for us (this) year and Marc Savard did a tremendous job of running it, teaching, doing all sorts of things like that. We thought it was the right thing to do here to start and we'll see how it goes."

The Blues finished with a 24.3 percent efficiency rating (6-for-19 in their last eight games), only trailing Edmonton (29.5) and Boston (25.2), so the logical thinking is to keep players as familiar and as consistent as they were throughout the regular season in which Tarasenko missed all but 10 games.

"I don't think we have a second unit," Schenn said. "It's a 1A-1B type of thing. I think maybe for today why they kept us together is because I think as units throughout the year with our unit and the other group, we were third in the league. Sometimes you don't want to mess with chemistry. We didn't have Vladi all year and now we're going to need him in the playoffs here. We've got to find ways to jell both units.

"This is what we started with for Day 1. There's going to be some tweaking as we go along here. This was just Day 1 of special teams. Obviously adding a huge weapon like Vladi back into our lineup, he scores a lot of goals for us. ... We'll keep moving forward.

"It's going to take timing, no doubt about it. That's why you have to use these practices and these days before we get to our seeding games. We sure hope so. We have a lot of firepower on both units and hopefully we get clicking."

If Tarasenko sticks with the second unit, he'll do so with open arms. That unit was razor sharp for the Blues before the NHL pause.

"It feels good obviously. He's got everything," Parayko said of adding Tarasenko. "He's got all the tools over there. He's a shot threat, pass threat. He can make anything happen over there. He's dangerous, teams are going to be watching him close and it kind of opens up space for all of us that are on a line with him."

And what did Berube think of the first day's work?

(St. Louis Blues photo)

Blues defenseman Alex Pietrangelo (gray) was back quarterbacking the

top power play unit on Sunday at training camp.

"I thought it was good work, they worked extremely hard," he said. "They competed hard, moved the puck pretty quick. Execution and timing are a little bit off, but the work ethic was there. They stayed on things, competitive. It's hard for power plays in practice. You don't want to shoot the puck that much. You saw Parayko shoot one and it hit one of our guys, 'Rosie' (Jacob de la Rose) blocked it. You've got to be careful with that. You've got to watch where you shoot the puck and things like that, but I thought overall, it was pretty good."

With an off day Monday, Berube ended things with some conditioning work.

"When you do those 45-minute or hour practices, there's a lot more skating and I think today it was more special teams and heading into the weekend, Chief just wanted to give us a little skate," Schenn said. "That's really all it was. It's a short amount of time, it's going to come quick. You want to feel as good as possible (and) I guess as fast as possible. The coaching staff is doing as good a job to get us ready."