For those of us who actually took the time to sit and watch a webcast of last night’s game, it was uglier than even your average St. Louisian. Only Troy Brouwer, Niklas Hjalmarsson, and Tomas Kopecky dressed of last year’s regulars, while the Blues had pretty much their standard roster on the ice. From the middle portion of the game I saw, the play was relatively plodding, with all the goals coming simply because someone had to score.
I missed the two fights early on, first from Kyle Beach, and the second from John Scott. By all accounts, Beach was fed his dick by B.J. Crombeen, and that sadly wasn’t even the worst part of his night. Beach would end up an ugly -4 for the evening and looked ineffective doing it- for those of you scoring at home, that’s not a good thing for a rookie trying to make a team, first round draft pick or not. With word coming out after the game that Coach Q will be trimming the roster down drastically as early as today, it would seem last night’s performance all but put $40 of credit on his I-pass. To add injury to insult, Jack Skille, who has actually looked good for a fair amount of the pre-season, left the game in the second period with an alleged arm injury and didn’t return. He’s now listed at day to day. It’d be a real kick in the cock for Simple Jack to finally play well enough to stick with the big club and then end up getting hurt to lose his roster spot for opening night. His play has warranted him staying here, so here’s hoping the injury isn’t serious.
Marty Turco played the entire game and let in four goals, but given the roster in front of him, it should hardly be cause for any sort of panic, even in spite of the fact that Corey Crawford will be playing the entirety of tonight’s contest. It’s the second night of a back-to-back, so Crawford would be playing anyway were this the regular season. Turco’s looked spry and confident thus far in the practice games, that should be the primary concern, not goals allowed when playing behind what’s essentially the Rockford Ice Hogs.
Not all is gloom and doom, however, as Viktor Stalberg finally asserted himself last night, putting six shots on goal and registering the secondary assist on the Hawks’ lone goal from Ben Smith. He certainly picked an opportune time to do so with the guillotine looming, Skille getting hurt, and Beach peeing his pants.
In yet another spectacular marketing failure by John McDonough and Jay Blunk, tonight’s game will once again not be televised. Reports are coming in that there will be more regulars in the lineup, and that Q is viewing these last two as more dress rehearsals for Thursday and beyond than auditions for the kids. Should there be a mass exodus on outbound I-90 today, we’ll let you know about it as well, including how it affects the opening night roster