Tyler Tucker doesn’t remember the chants.
He was just focused on getting off the ice.
When Tucker’s season ended in Game 4 against Winnipeg due to an injury, he had to be helped off the ice, unable to put any weight on his right leg. He’d scored his first playoff goal earlier that evening as he’d just appeared to be finding his way in the postseason intensity.
But then he fell awkwardly in the corner after hitting Winnipeg’s Brandon Tanev, ending his playoff run and leading to the Enterprise Center crowd chanting “Tuck-er! Tuck-er! Tuck-er!” as he went down the tunnel.
“Not really, to be honest,” Tucker said when asked if he remembers the fan reaction. “I was in a lot of pain. I’ve watched it a few times, but I don’t even know if I watched it with volume. No, I don’t remember that at all. I kind of blacked out, to be honest.”
Tucker did not end up needing surgery and went through a summer of rehab to arrive fully healthy at training camp. He played his first preseason game Sunday in Columbus, logging 19:48 of ice time and throwing four hits, tied for the most on the team.
“He’s recovered well,” Blues coach Jim Montgomery said earlier during training camp. “I don’t see an issue. He looks like he’s had a really good summer. His pace and his instincts, which I thought have always been really good, have been showing.”
Tucker enters the season in a position far different from where he was a year ago. Last camp, Tucker was an afterthought on the blue line as the Blues broke camp with eight defensemen, including Scott Perunovich, Pierre-Olivier Joseph and Matthew Kessel. Instead, he was waived and then assigned to AHL affiliate Springfield (Massachusetts).
But once Tucker was recalled from the AHL in December, he never went back down. He played 38 games in the NHL last season, totaling three goals and four assists as he helped the Blues navigate injuries to Colton Parayko and Nick Leddy on the back end.
When the first round opened against Winnipeg, Tucker was a healthy scratch. But in Game 2, he entered as the seventh defenseman and then took Ryan Suter’s spot in Games 3 and 4 before his injury.
“He played to his strengths,” Montgomery said. “He knows who he is. He was physical, but he’s also a hockey player. He’s around the puck. His instincts take him to where the puck’s going to be, so he’s either defensively ending plays, or offensively, he’s keeping pucks alive for us.”
Tucker: “I think confidence was a huge thing. Playing with an older veteran D-man in Sutes for the majority of my games, he was easy to play with and made me feel confident and calm and poised with the puck. Just build off last year, and hopefully things trend in the right direction.”
Over the summer, as the Blues remade their blue line, Tucker was part of the plans. They did not re-sign Suter. They waived Leddy, who was claimed by San Jose. Tucker is expected to be in the opening night lineup on the third pairing, potentially with Logan Mailloux on the right side.
Asked if this camp feels different because of his position on the depth chart, Tucker was quick to point out what happened two years ago. At training camp in 2023, Tucker was penciled into the NHL lineup (as a replacement for Niko Mikkola’s hard minutes), and then he was paired with Marco Scandella on opening night.
But then he was a healthy scratch 49 times in the NHL, and his only AHL time came in the form of a conditioning loan. Kessel and Perunovich jumped him on the Blues depth chart by the end of the season. Perunovich was traded to the Islanders, then signed as a free agent with Utah. Kessel is expected to be the seventh defenseman this season for St. Louis.
“I feel like I’ve come in two years ago and I was kind of in the same position,” Tucker said. “I feel like I just have to do what I did last year and keep building on my game and trusting myself and getting better every day. Good things will happen.”
Mailloux and Tucker knew each other personally before Mailloux’s trade from Montreal this summer, as they both attended Lucas Condotta’s wedding. Tucker said he grew up around Condotta’s family, and Mailloux played with him in Laval.
“As soon as he got here a few weeks ago, kind of hit it off right away,” Tucker said. “We’ve been hanging out quite a bit. … Played against him in the minors quite a bit. I know how he plays and what he can do. Obviously, super offensively talented. Big guy who can play a mean game as well. Excited to get to know him better and get to play with him a little bit.”
Using the off-day
To end Sunday’s practice, the Blues coaching staff put players through the first conditioning skate of the preseason as they skated laps to end practice. That was in addition to some hard-skating drills during practice, including a full-ice two-on-two drill.
“It’s a good time to push them with some skating,” Montgomery said Sunday. “It was designed a couple of weeks ago when we talk as a staff and then we talk with our managers. They give us feedback on what camp looks like, and then we talk to strength and conditioning to see how do we best get them in the best skating condition possible for day one of the season? This was planned for that.”
The Blues were off Monday and return to the ice on Tuesday morning at 9:15 a.m. at Centene Community Ice Center in Maryland Heights.
Blues send 5 back to juniors
The Blues trimmed their training camp roster by five on Monday morning when they returned a handful of players to their junior teams.
They assigned forwards Antoine Dorion (Quebec in the QMJHL) and Adam Jecho (Edmonton in the WHL), and defensemen Lukas Fischer (Sarnia in the OHL) and Will McIsaac (Spokane in the WHL) to their junior clubs. The Blues also released goaltender Matthew Koprowski from his amateur tryout and returned him to Owen Sound in the OHL.
The Blues now have 53 on-ice participants remaining at training camp.
Among the junior-eligible players that remained at camp were Justin Carbonneau and Adam Jiricek.
Carbonneau (the team’s 2025 first-round pick) has a goal and an assist in the first two preseason games and will report to Blainville-Boisbriand if he’s returned to junior hockey. Jiricek can be sent back to Brantford in the OHL but is also AHL-eligible if the Blues choose to go that route and send him to Springfield.
The Blues did not practice Monday and will return to the ice Tuesday morning.
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Matthew DeFranks | Post-Dispatch
Hockey reporter
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