It Figures.

By Brad Lee

So Keith Tkachuk starts the season horribly. He has the whole weight thing on his shoulders, and his gut. The new rules give him trouble at first. Then he gets hurt driving to the net.

Fast forward a few weeks, and he's setting the league on fire. The team feeds off his confidence and enthusiam. Fans allow themselves to find a little hope. And then reality punches us in the face. Broken knuckle. Huh? I've never heard of an athlete breaking a knuckle. A finger, a wrist, some bones in the hand. But never a knuckle. Didn't he do like the Hansen brothers and pack the foil?

So then it starts spiralling out of control. Curtis Sanford gets hurt and they almost have to dress a cop from St. Charles as the backup goalie the next night while a rookie flies in from Alaska. I'm surprised his plane didn't have to make an emergency landing.

Look, no one is getting any ideas that a run to the playoffs was in the offing. But respectability didn't seem that far off. And then the knuckle broke the camel's back. My goals for the rest of this season are simple.

- Make game nights fun again. At least make it look like the team is dangerous.
- Play smarter. I think an under reported cause of strokes is Blues players taking dumb penalties.
- Show improvement. This is probalby the first one over again. But I hope this team can show some progress. PLEASE.

It should be interesting what this team does in the next two weeks. They play seven games in the next two weeks against some strong conference teams.

It's time to knuckle down and play better.