Before any of that matters, Columbus has a game of its own. The Blue Jackets host Pittsburgh on Friday and then travel to St. Louis, which puts them on the 2nd night of a back-to-back with a flight in between. The Penguins game will decide which goalie Columbus can use here and how fresh its legs are, and it could flip whatever mood the Jackets bring to Enterprise Center. Their season so far has swung both ways: Matthew Knies scored 2 goals and added an assist in his Columbus debut, a 6-3 opening-night win over Buffalo, and then the Jackets lost 4-1 to Utah.
The Blues are the settled side of this matchup. They've had a day off after the Sharks game, they're at home, and the problem is easy to name: they've lost an early lead in each of their last 2 games. They have been scoring first. Holding a lead for 60 minutes is the part they haven't managed yet, and a tired road team is about as good a chance to fix that as they'll get. Columbus has shown it can score in bunches when Knies and the new pieces click, and the Utah loss showed what it looks like when they don't.
Puck drops at 6:00 PM CT. On paper this is an early-October game between 2 teams still working out who they are. For St. Louis it's also the first real chance to win at home, and the 3-game skid ends one way or another. Columbus's Friday result will shape the rest of the picture, so check back once the Pittsburgh game is in.