Skip to main content

Thin

Sheesh. We are only two games into the season and the Blues' lack of depth is already being exposed:

Lee Stempniak's knee injury will force him to miss a second straight game today, and it will cause the Blues to alter their forward combinations again.

In Sunday's practice, T.J. Oshie was moved to the left wing on a line with center Andy McDonald and right wing Brad Boyes. Also, center Jay McClement will play in the middle of left winger Keith Tkachuk and right winger David Backes.

Oh, please. We gotta watch McClement try to act the playmaker he isn't, again? It isn't as if we had lost another center to injury.

It's frustrating. The Blues obviously needed another scoring forward to fill in this season, yet they never landed anyone. Maybe they were interested in Brendan Shanahan, and then again maybe that was just the Blues brass blowing smoke. Either way the product on the ice is going to suffer without a little help. The saddest part is there are guys sitting around still waiting for offers. (I'm thinking Mark Parrish could be had pretty cheaply. A world-beater? Well, no. But the idea is to get some depth, and who else is out there who is only 31 and has six 20+ goal campaigns to his credit?)

If the Blues decide to just go with what they got, they will be shifting around constantly and any offensive cohesion will evaporate quickly.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Early Thoughts on City 2025

There are few things harder to keep track of than an MLS side in their off-season, at least for me. Despite the fact it takes place roughly during the time the MLB Hot Stove season is in full swing, it is nowhere near as easy to follow along with as baseball. Part of it is how disconnected MLS is with the international soccer calendar. St. Louis City SC is still digesting the moves it made last summer even though those players have already played important games for the club. It is all weird and disjointed, and I always feel like I am playing catch-up. Happily, the moves made in the off-season this year were not numerous.  German Timo Baumgartl comes over from Europe as an option at center back, which is good because that was a position that was a little rocky for City last season. Given his own troubles over the last few seasons (cancer and uneven play in the aftermath of that), a spell with City can give Baumgartl a chance to have a re-set. Given his pedigree and the fact City si...

Blues Fall Off a Cliff

 Hockey seasons will have their ups and downs. For whatever reason, be it injuries, a challenging schedule, an inexplicable loss of form, it is difficult for teams to maintain a good level of compete for an entire season. The good teams just limit their funks. The St. Louis Blues, however, are not a good team. They are a poor team, and poor teams sink under the weight of "here we go again" night after night.  I will admit I only watched the first two periods of last night's 5-0 loss to a Colorado team that had been scuffling of late. Two periods were more than enough to get the gist of it. It was also enough to lead me to a diagnosis as to what ails the team. It isn't that they are young and are going through growing pains. No, the reason the Blues are so bad is that the veterans who are being paid to be the backbone of this team are not doing their jobs. I'm talking about Schenn, Buchnevich, Faulk, and even Binnington and Parayko. Over $30M of the salary cap is b...

Blues Beat Bugbear

 The St. Louis Blues have not had many out-of-character results so far this season. For the most part they have been handling the teams they usually handle and doing nothing against the teams that seem to always have their number. There is some solace to be had just knowing that you are going to probably beat Calgary, and will probably lose to Columbus, just as the sun will most likely rise in the East tomorrow. Granted that isn't an ideal set of affairs for a sports team, but Blues fans have learned to take what they can get. Which is why it is fair to say last night's victory over Utah was unusual. The Blues do not play well against that collection of players. Ever. So, any victory would be noteworthy in this matchup, but the resilience they showed last night was an added bonus. The Blues still have crappy puck luck, but last night they didn't let it get them down and, miracle of miracles, the puck luck evened out for the game. For a change the PK wasn't always runnin...