St. Louis Blues Owe Winning Streak to 4th Liner Noel Acciari

There have been many contributing factors to the St. Louis Blues’ rollercoaster of a season that saw the team win three straight games, lose their next eight, and win their next seven. One of the more under-the-radar moves in the offseason was the signing of Noel Acciari to play on the fourth line (from ‘Noel Acciari has been the glue on the Blues’ effective fourth line’ St. Louis Post Dispatch, 11/20/22).

Throughout the seven-game winning streak, however, Acciari played like anything but a fourth-line player and is going back to his 2019-20 Florida Panther days that saw him score 20 goals and receive consideration for the Selke Trophy.

During the Blues’ extended winning streak that has turned their season around, Acciari had six points and four goals. However, it wasn’t his point production that made him the Blues’ saving grace, it was his ability to play with Ryan O’Reilly.

O’Reilly Has Finally Found a Place in the Blues’ Forward Group

While he has been settling in on the third line with Ivan Barbashev and Brayden Schenn as of late and even on the fourth line, Acciari’s presence on the O’Reilly line stabilized the team and allowed head coach Craig Berube to maneuver some of his other lines to help right the ship.

The departure of David Perron has been a hotly-contested topic for Blues fans over the first two months of the season. After general manager Doug Armstrong opted to sign Nick Leddy to a four-year, $16 million deal that all but took the Blues out of the running for Perron, it left holes not only on the power play but on the top line with the team’s captain.

Berube entered the season with newly extended Jordan Kyrou on the top line with O’Reilly, but that experiment resulted in just one point through his first 10 games of the season. Being able to form the forward lines based on pairs is something that Berube has had a lot of success with in the past, but to begin the season, nothing seemed to work for the Blues’ bench boss.

Enter Acciari. It only took a few games with O’Reilly for him to bring balance to the Blues forward group and spark an elongated winning streak. O’Reilly is a challenger for the Selke Trophy almost every season, and the Blues have a history of pairing forwards who play a similar style of game. There’s a reason why the Russian line has been so popular for Berube and why he searches for a fourth-line identity of physical, grinding…