Scheduled lineup: November 25th at Rangers

Jim Montgomery officially begins his tenure as head coach of the St. Louis Blues, and we now know what lineup the team will lead in its first game under his leadership.

The Blues skated at Madison Square Garden on Monday morning following Montgomery’s opening statements to the media as the team prepared to play the New York Rangers (6:00 p.m. CT, FanDuel Sports Network, 101 ESPN). Although the new coach’s lineup changes weren’t drastic, he did make some tweaks to the offense.

“To me, this is an offensive-minded team and that just shows how hard it is to score,” Montgomery said. “We need to know the details and be in the right areas – the difficult areas – at the right time to be able to score more goals. But we have the ability to score goals.”

Forward Zack Bolduc will return to the lineup on the third line, centered by Oskar Sundqvist. This allows Radek Faksa to be reunited with Alexey Toropchenko and Nathan Walker on the fourth line. Additionally, right wings Jordan Kyrou and Jake Neighbors appear to have swapped spots in the top two lines.

While Montgomery didn’t specifically comment on tonight’s lineup, he did share his coaching philosophy as he took the reins.

“As a coach, you train for today, but I also train for tomorrow,” Montgomery said. “So there will be a consideration of what we need to do now to be competitive without losing sight of the development of the team. And the team will always come first; the Blue Note will always come first.” And that is our team identity. And there are some players who need to learn how to win in this league.

The defensive pairings appear to be the same as last game, with Joel Hofer practicing in net.