A weekend back-to-back for the Hawks starts on Friday night in St. Louis against the Blues.

A few months ago, these two teams met in the same building and Chicago handed St. Louis a thorough ass-kicking in an 8-3 game that may not have been as close as the already lopsided score indicated. What have the Blues been up to since then? Most recently, they were getting their asses handed to them by the Nashville Predators, losing 7-2 there on Thursday night before getting back into town late. It’s been a mostly downward trend for the Blues this season: they lost seven in a row during the back half of October and into early November and enter this game with a stretch of 2-4-0 in their last six, with that Nashville defeat at the end of it. There was also a 1-3-3 stretch just before Thanksgiving, all of which explains why the Blues are sitting in seventh place in the Central Division, 13th in the Western Conference and 29th in the entire league. Really a shame, isn’t it?

The Tale of the Tape below spells out most of the Blues’ issues: they don’t score much (2.53 goals per game, 30th in the league), give up too many (3.56 per game, 31st), have mediocre possession numbers and aren’t being bailed out by their special teams. It brings this site immense joy to report that Jordan Binnington, when not busy throwing water bottles or attempting to steal milestone pucks, absolutely sucks this season with a 7-8-5 record, .869 save percentage and 3.49 goals-against average, all adding up to a goals save above expected at minus-14.5, which Hockey Reference has marked as the worst number in the league among the 81 goalies in the data set! Joel Hofer hasn’t been any better (4-6-2, .890, 3.18), further adding to St. Louis’ woes. Hofer relieved Binnington in Thursday’s game after a dismal Nashville offense lit Binnington up for six goals in 40 minutes, so either one could be in net for this game.

Injuries aren’t helping St. Louis, with Nick Bjugstad, Jordan Kyrou, Jimmy Snuggerud and Alexey Toropchenko among the sidelined skaters at the moment. Robert Thomas (21 points in 28 games), Dylan Holloway (17 in 32) and Pavel Buchnevich (16 in 32) are the top offensive threats here but their numbers are indicative of the limited threat they provide. The Blues are not a good hockey team and the Hawks would do well to jump on them early and reinforce that, especially with the Blues having skated a road game the night before. Here was the St. Louis lineup from that game:

Blues lines
per x.com/lkorac10

Neighbours-Thomas-Buchnevich
Holloway-Schenn-Joseph
Suter-Dvorsky-Fabbri
McGing-Sundqvist-Kaskimaki

Fowler-Parayko
Broberg-Faulk
Tucker-Mailloux

Binnington

— lineslineslines.bsky.social (@lineslineslines.bsky.social) December 11, 2025 at 6:37 PM

As for the Hawks, things have settled somewhat after last weekend’s debacles caused some nerves around these parts, thanks to Wednesday’s relatively easy 3-0 win over the Rangers at the United Center. Given how well things went in that game, it’s hard to find any reason to stray from the lineup that took the ice in that game, which was:

Blackhawks lines
per @benpopecst.bsky.social

Greene-Bedard-Burakovsky
Moore-Nazar-Bertuzzi
Teravainen-Dickinson-Mikheyev
Dach-Donato-Lafferty

Vlasic-Crevier
Grzelcyk-Levshunov
Kaiser-Murphy

Knight

— lineslineslines.bsky.social (@lineslineslines.bsky.social) December 10, 2025 at 6:07 PM

Indications from the morning skate suggest no changes, either. Might as well keep this ship navigating the steadier waters it returned to on Wednesday night, eh?

Let’s go Hawks.

Tale of the Tape

Blackhawks — Statistic — Blues
46.16% (29th) — 5-on-5 Corsi For — 47.69% (25th)
44.11% (31st) — 5-on-5 Expected goals for — 48.31% (24th)
2.97 (t-19th) — Goals per game — 2.53 (30th)
2.97 (16th) — Goals against per game — 3.56 (31st)
46.5% (29th) — Faceoffs — 51.5% (t-11th)
22.2% (10th) — Power play — 19.0% (17th)
83.8% (6th) — Penalty kill — 77.8% (24th)
(All stats from this season)

How to watch

When: 7 p.m. CT
Where: Enterprise Center, St. Louis
TV: N/A (This game is exclusively on ESPN+)
Webstream: ESPN+/Hulu
Radio: WGN 720