The St. Louis Blues will be without their leading scorer and top center as they return from the Olympic break. The team announced that Robert Thomas will be taking a personal leave of absence until Friday of this week. He will miss Thursday’s game against the Seattle Kraken but should be back with the team beforf Saturday’s game against the New Jersey Devils.
Thomas’ role in the Blues lineup can’t be understated. He has been a pillar of the Blues offense, averaging the most ice time (19 minutes) and scoring the most points (33) among St. Louis forwards through 42 games this season. Thomas entered this season on the heels of two career-years, marked by 60 assists in both seasons, to go with 86 points and 81 points respectively. He has been St. Louis’ main playmaker since the departure of Ryan O’Reilly and leaves a major hole to be filled for next game.
Thomas sat out of four games in late October and missed an additional 11 games after sustaining a lower-body injury on January 10th. St. Louis leaned heavily on Pavel Buchnevich in response, placing the veteran Russian winger into Thomas’ role atop the powerplay and penalty-killing units. Buchnevich also moved into the team’s top-center role, though he has struggled on faceoffs, with a 39.8 faceoff percentage this season. The Blues could look to Slovakian Olympian Dalibor Dvorsky to take center duties off of Buchnevich’s hands in the short-term, or could task Brayden Schenn and Jimmy Snuggerud with platooning in the role form their spots on the second-line. No approach will be perfect as St. Louis looks to replace their star in an important, Western Conference matchup.