ST. LOUIS — The Blues will certainly get one injured skater back and may have another, although that one’s a longer shot to happen, when they host the Colorado Avalanche at Enterprise Center on Sunday at 2 p.m. (ESPN, ESPN 101.1-FM).

Defenseman Torey Krug will get back into the lineup after missing two games with an upper-body injury, suffered in a 6-4 loss at the New York Rangers this past Monday.

“Yeah, he’s a player tomorrow,” Blues coach Craig Berube said.

Berube said Krug could have likely played on Thursday, a 5-2 loss against the Winnipeg Jets, but wanted the d-man to get in a couple practices just to be on the safe side, which he did.

As for Pavel Buchnevich (lower-body injury), the forward is questionable.

Buchnevich, who has 20 points (nine goals, 11 assists) in 20 games, has also missed the past two games, but he has not practiced the past two days. However, he’s been working out off ice and was walking without any noticeable limps.

“We’ll see. He couldn’t go on the ice again today, but we’ll see how he feels tomorrow,” Berube said. “You never know. I’m not going to count him out yet, but I’m not going to count on him yet either.

“He’s moving a lot better; it’s getting better, which is great. … He’s been off for a little bit. It’s a Tough call.”

Berube will speak prior to the game at approximately 12:30 p.m., so there will be more clarification on Buchnevich’s status then.

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With a glutton of games, it seems, for the last month or so, the Blues finally got the chance to put in consecutive full practice days, something that’s been void of their congested schedule.

They sure needed it, and Berube took full advantage of it ahead of back-to-back home dates Sunday against the Avalanche and Monday night against the Nashville Predators.

“It’s always important,” Berube said. “With as much hockey as we’ve played lately, it’s tough to practice a lot. It’s tough to really grind and work on things. If you do practice, it’s usually short. Pregame skates is pregame skates, but we try to throw a couple drills in pregame skates. Overall to get the practices we’ve had the last two days is difficult throughout the season because the schedule is so jammed up.

“Today again was a good practice, keep working on things that we’ve got to improve on. We ended up working on the penalty kill at the end.”

Despite the back-to-back games coming up, the Blues (12-15-0) didn’t waste the time nor did they hold back on putting forth hard-nosed skates, one which included some hefty bag skating of full ice sprints.

“It’s not easy, but at the end of the day, that’s the easiest thing to control,” captain Ryan O’Reilly said. “‘Chief’ identified it and it has to be a staple for us and the group. It starts with myself defending both sides of the puck working hard that way and holding guys accountable to that work ethic, because that’s Blues hockey. Since I’ve been here, since I’ve been in the league, you play against the Blues or you’re here, you know it’s going to be grinding, you know it’s going to be a tough challenge. There’s no easy games and right now, we’ve given up … we’ve just been having so many of those easy games we’ve been giving and it’s time to get back to that.

“We had an extremely tough practice yesterday. Even today was pretty hard with a game tomorrow, but we have to put in the work. Right now, we’re not consistent with it and right now it’s a good thing for us. We have to work a lot harder together as a group and these last few days have been that, which is good.”

Berube called Friday’s practice one where they’re looking for work ethic. After losing six of the past seven and seven of nine, allowing four or more goals in all nine, the Blues are looking for their blue-collar mindset again, and it’s been a challenge to consistently find it.

“That’s our identity, that’s the culture that’s been here way before my time and it’s been passed on from leadership group to leadership group,” center Robert Thomas said. “We’re not going to be the group that changes that here. It’s something we’ve got to get on top of.”

We’ve known what the identity has been in the past, but what is it now? That’s been part of the inconsistencies in the first quarter-plus of the season.

“It’s kind of a tough question to answer,” O’Reilly said. “I know for myself, I haven’t performed the way I’ve wanted to and I think as a guy that sees a lot of minutes and such like that, that can trickle out through the team and such. It’s disappointing that way. For myself, I came into this league as someone who defended well and I’ve completely lost touch with that. I’m not doing that right now. So speaking for myself, that’s something I have to get back to. The work ethic and being hard to play against and it comes from that.

“You can see when we do things the right way how good it is. I’d put us up against any team. It’s just there. It’s there and we’re deep. We’re not a team with superstars that steals games. We need each other and our depth us what will drive us. We see it. You get glimpses of it and it’s fun, and then we just can’t hold onto it. It’s an exciting group to be a part of. I think we can still do something. This is a great challenge for us to dig deep and find something and then start getting back to that team we want to be.”

The Blues have to find it, and find it fast.

“I don’t really got too much of an answer for you on that one. It’s unacceptable, whether we think we can just score enough goals to make up for that or I don’t know what the case is,” Thomas said. “I think everyone in here’s confident in each other. That belief has not gone anywhere, so I think that’s a positive. We’re going to turn this corner and we’re going to look back and have some good times about it and be happy where we end up.”

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Speaking of the penalty kill, which is dead last in the NHL this season at a woeful 63.8 percent, including allowing a power-play goal on six of the opponents’ past nine opportunities the past five games (66.6 percent), the Blues did some heavy work on it towards the end of Saturday’s practice.

“I don’t think it’s one thing (that has to change),” Berube said. “I think it’s just tightening it up a little bit more than anything. Looking at it, we don’t take a lot of penalties, but the penalties we’re taking, we get scored on at the end of the PK quite a bit from a missed clear, they keep the puck alive. It could be just a missed assignment. It’s not one thing, it’s different things that happen at different times and it goes in our net. It’s just tightening it up. We’ve got to be a little more detailed for sure with our routes and things like that and we’ve got to be tighter. I think we’re just too spread out before on the PK and we’ve got to tighten it up more.”

The good news is the Blues are by far the least penalized team in the league and by a wide margin at 183 minutes total, 14 fewer going into Saturday than the Vegas Golden Knights.

That’s good that the discipline is there, but it doesn’t make one bit of difference if they can’t even kill a penalty or two, if that’s all they’re tasked to deal with on a game by game basis.

“I think it’s great. I don’t think you want to be marching towards the penalty box,” Berube said. “Listen, we’ve been a disciplined team here for quite some time going back to when we won.”

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Sunday will be the second matchup between the Blues and Avalanche this season.

The Blues downed the Avs 3-2 in Denver on Nov. 14, the third win of their seven-game winning streak.

“They’re a great team, great talents,” Berube said of the Avalanche. “I’m not going to name all their guys, you guys know them all. You’ll write about them. It’s a tough challenge. I know they’re missing people, but that doesn’t matter. They’re a competitive team, it’s going to be a tough game.”

Colorado is missing some major parts to their lineup due to injury, including Nathan MacKinnon, Gabriel Landeskog, Bowen Byram, Josh Manson and others, so it’s an opportunity for the Blues to try and right themselves without taking anyone lightly.

“We’re not in position to take anyone lightly, but it’s a good challenge for us,” O’Reilly said. “It’s going to be a really tough challenge for us. We have two tough games coming up, but we’ve just got to take it one at a time here, get back. We talk about consistency and such, try so hard to be consistent. Now it’s just pay attention to the details. It’s details, details and build it from there. That’s the focus.”

Colorado eliminated the Blues from the playoffs in each of the past two seasons, including a six-game tightly-contested series in the second round last year, arguably the Avalanche’s toughest series en route to winning the Stanley Cup.

“They won the Cup last year because of their depth and they have a ton of great players,” Thomas said. “They’re going to come out and play good. They’re going to be good and we’ve got to be better.

“Big divisional game, a team that beat us last year in the playoffs. If you’re not ready for that one, I don’t know what will get you ready. I think we’re all really excited for that one and a chance to prove ourselves.”

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The Blues’ projected lineup:

Brayden Schenn-Ryan O’Reilly-Josh Leivo

Jordan Kyrou-Robert Thomas-Vladimir Tarasenko

Brandon Saad-Ivan Barbashev-Tyler Pitlick

Nathan Walker-Noel Acciari-Will Bitten

Nick Leddy-Colton Parayko

Torey Krug-Justin Faulk

Niko Mikkola-Robert Bortuzzo

Jordan Binnington is expected to start in goal; Thomas Greiss would be the backup.

The healthy scratch is expected to be Calle Rosen. Pavel Buchnevich (lower body) is questionable. Marco Scandella (hip), Scott Perunovich (shoulder) and Logan Brown (upper body) are out.

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The Avalanche’s projected lineup:

Artturi Lehkonen-Mikko Rantanen-Valeri Nichushkin

Andrew Cogliano-J.T. Compher-Logan O’Connor

Charles Hudon-Alex Newhook-Jean-Luc Foudy

Dryden Hunt-Ben Meyers-Jacob MacDonald

Samuel Girard-Cale Makar

Devon Toews-Erik Johnson

Andreas Englund-Brad Hunt

Alexandar Georgiev is projected to start in goal; Pavel Francouz would be the backup.

The Avalanche list no healthy scratches. Nathan MacKinnon (upper body), Gabriel Landeskog (knee), Darren Helm (hip), Bowen Byram (lower body), Josh Manson (lower body), Shane Bowers (upper body), Kurtis MacDermid (lower body) and Evan Rodrigues (lower body) are all out.