Beyond Checkerdome

Another week goes by, and another round of games that we can celebrate. Here we talk about a 3-0-1 stretch including Colorado, Vancouver, Calagary and Arizona. Now that the college season has ended, there are ELCs being signed. We also talk about how rewarding it is to see Magnus Paajarvi succeed, and what that could mean for Nail Yakupov. As predicted, March has been pretty good to the Blues - but that didn't come without a cost, as the Blues lost the services of Paul Stastny for a while. While the Blues can hold down the fort for a spell, what does this mean for the playoffs? Yep .. playoffs.

This is coming to you all a lot later than intended. In this episode we cover the 4-0 week that snapped the losing streak and put everyone in a lot better mood. These are the games against the Avs, Wilds, Ducks and Islanders that all resulted in wins for the good guys. We have the observations like usual, but it’s hard to get too nit-picky with results like this. We take notice of the improved power play, and the incorporation of some of the youngsters into the team’s game plan. Also, we love us some fourth-line goals.

This was one nutty week. First the Blues ended their bye week with a tough match against the Hawks, which contributed to their losing streak continuing from where they left off. They went 0-3 in these games, and it wasn’t pretty. More significant than those losses, the Blues lost Kevin Shattenkirk to the trade deadline. We talk about him being sent to the Caps with Pheonix Copley, as well as the players we got in return. Also, there is some speculation about the Blues power play unit adapting to Shatty’s exit, and the callup of Jordan Schmaltz. Our ol’ buddy Patrik Berglund got a new deal, too! All this and more!

We may be old codgers, but we still succumb to peer pressure. If there’s a little extra rambling this week, it’s because we had our arms twisted into doing #ShotsForGoals for the Montreal game before recording the podcast. Not that we needed much help - losing to Pittsburgh was a bummer, but ripping off 4 consecutive wins afterwards made us all a little giddy. We cover those games and celebrate the first career goal of Ivan Barbashev. We also talk about the injuries to Robby Fabbri and Paul Stastny. The latter particularly hurts, because we wanted to crow about his playing with Tarasenko finally. Thank goodness we have Patrik Berglund still!

This week we take a look at the 0-1-1 week of Nashville and Dallas games, including the excruciating collapse against the Preds. Somehow that leads us to the topics of bad baseball dates and Keith Jackson. We also welcome the arrival of Nikita Soshnikov to the team. We have a few thoughts about this move and what else this team might do before the deadline.