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The Hockey Gods Are Trying To Kill Me

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As if losing to the Red Wings wasn't bad enough, the Blues are now looking at another possible injury to a main cog in their lineup:

A knee injury suffered by Erik Johnson is expected to keep the Blues defenseman out of tonight's game against Los Angeles, but club officials were reluctant Wednesday night to look past the next 24 hours.

Johnson left the team's game Wednesday seven minutes into the first period, after he was tangled up with Detroit's Pavel Datsyuk in the neutral zone. Johnson got up slowly, headed to the dressing room and didn't return.

It appeared that he was favoring his right knee, which is the one he had surgery on two years ago to repair a torn ligament and caused him to miss the entire 2008-09 season. But there were hints of relief that it might not be a re-aggravation of Johnson's prior injury.

"Well, at least he's not dead!"

I'm sorry, but it has gotten to the point where it is impossible to see the "glass half full" moments in any of this. Right now the Blues are without Oshie, McDonald, Perron, Pietrangelo, Polak, and now Johnson. To make matters worse the Blues are still stuck in the old habit of only calling up "hard workers" from Peoria (otherwise known as the great untalented.) Given the length of the Blues rebuilding process it is pretty damning that they have no one to call up to fill a forward slot other than skaters like Cracknell, Porter or Scatchard.

On the blueline things are less critical, but if Pietro or EJ were to go down for a long time having a player like Jonas Junland over in Europe instead of being at least in Peoria could be less than optimal.

Tonight it is back on home ice against a superior Kings team.

Well...at least we will try hard.
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