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St. Louis, MO • United States • 39 Years Old • Male

Blues tame the Jr. Wild 4 to 1 - updated

FINAL UPDATE - The events and outcome of the game last night mattered little in perspective as a 34 year old female fan lost her life at the arena shortly after the game. According to various reports, she fell off a second floor escalator. I hope you will all keep her family, friends, and the other fans and Scottrade employees that witnessed this tragic event in your thoughts.

The Blues beat the mostly JV Wild four to one tonight.

The Wild jumped out to an early lead on miscues by Patrik Berglund and Jake Allen. Berglund turned the puck over to Jason Zucker putting Jake Allen in a bad spot. Instead of holding his ground or just pushing forward to take more angle away from Zucker, Allen pushed with his right leg moving him to the left. Zucker shot back to Allen's right, putting it past him. Making the first move and opening up more net was a double whammy that Allen couldn't overcome. The rest of the period was scoreless and a familiar patter returned with the Blues losing while outshooting their opponent eleven to four. The first period was highlighted with a short fight by Biznasty and the shoulder injury of Fabbri, more on that later.

The early second period saw Ryan Reaves and Joel Rechlicz fighting to settle a score from the first period. Just before the midway mark, Alex Pietrangelo made a perfect cross ice pass to Patrick Berglund who buried the one timer to tie the game at one. Shortly after the goal Biznasty fought for the second time in the game. Before the puck was even dropped after the fight, Rechlicz found himself getting a two and a ten for unsportsmanlike conduct.

Early in the third Vladimir Tarasenko made a slick pass to Jordan Leopold who buried his chance into the virtually empty net. This was redemption for Leopold as he had a glorious chance in the first period with a lot of open net and put his shot over the net. Late in the third, the Blues capitalized on the power play after dumb penalties by Keith Ballard. TJ Oshie scored the easy power play goal on a pass from Paul Stastny from behind the net. David Backes added the empty netter while the game finished with a lot of pushing and trash talking shenanigans.

Highlights -
- Blues outshot the Wild 37-15
- Strong games from many Blues with Lehtera looking like a top 6 forward yet again.
- Shattenkirk and Pietrangelo with a strong game
- Leopold with an exceptional game
- Schwartz with a good first game
- Lindbohm with an unnoticed game

Lowlights-
- Allen looked like he was behind the puck all night and made a poor move on their goal. He seemed lucky a few shots missed the net.
- The JV Wild was winning or tied though most of the game
- Fabbri took what appeared to be a pretty routine check and went into the wall. He came up holding his arm in a way that suggests wrist or shoulder injury. As I have said before, the kid does not have the physical strength yet. He also isn't strong enough on his skates yet. He needs to get stronger before he has a roster spot. I hope it didn't take a serious injury for Blues management to realize this.

PRIOR UPDATE: Prosser claimed by the Wild. The Blues handled Prosser's situation poorly and it cost them. Lindbohm's non-AHL status costs us a very reliable d-man who severely outperformed Butler. Not a good lunch hour for the Blues.

PRIOR: I'll be back later with full lineups for tonight and a recap of the game but I wanted to put out a few items.

The Blues will find out of Prosser and Mueller cleared waivers at noon today. Please understand that just because a player clears waivers doesn't mean they have been sent down to Chicago. Some of the Blues players that have already cleared waivers have not been sent down yet and are still in camp. The Blues have a certain number of days to send them down after they clear waivers before they are subject to waivers again.

According to Michael Russo, the beat writer for the Minnesota Wild, Niklas Backstrom will get the start in net tonight and Darcy Kuemper will get the start Saturday in Minnesota (the Blues home and home series with the Wild starts tonight). Also, expect to see Tyler Graovac, Zach Phillips, Joel Rechlicz, Jon Blum and Justin Falk playing for the Wild tonight as they were recalled for the game. Jordan Schroeder will not be in the lineup as he cleared waivers and was sent to Iowa. Justin Fontaine is out with an injury.

Russo also reported that the Wild plan to dress a lineup on Saturday that is "very close to if not the lineup", one they plan to use in their opener against the Avalanche. I suspect that means we will see an AHL based lineup tonight, focused on those fighting for the last roster spots.

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