It’s Only Pre-Season.

By gallagher

It's been a few days since my last post, and the reason for it is not something that I've come up against over the last year.

I've found myself to be fairly contented as a Blues fan.

Not contented like "this could be our year" contented. Because I'd be writing and boiling over like crazy in that case. I'd be obsessing over every little injury and roster move and potential trade and whether we could beat the Red Wings. So, that day is coming, just not for a couple years.

No, I've been contented because this team has come so far since this time last year. We have a new President in John Davidson who has brought calm to the panic-mongers. He seems to have his hand inserted firmly into his puppet-GM Larry Pleau and has made some good signings. Coach Mike "I'm not really into playing the youngsters" Kitchen now has some good veterans to use, plus his rookie corps of last year are now seasoned sophomores (Dutchie Stempniak, Dennis Wideman, Jay McClement), so he should be steadier behind the bench than last year when he seemed to be perpetually confounded.

On top of that, expectations are low. Most people assume that the new NHL is like the old NHL and that if your team was bad last year, they're guaranteed to be bad this year. We all know our Blues were bad last year, but they are going to be much better this year. In fact, I'm willing to bet that they manage to be in a playoff race this spring.

So I don't have a lot to be bitter about and not a ton to be overly optimistic about, either. As a writer, that leaves me in no-man's land.

I could bitch and moan about the first pre-season game, which was attended by maybe 4,000 people. Maybe. I could bitch that the host staff has been thinned out and harder to find. I could bitch about the fact that they played the game without the new ribbon strip scoreboarding as well as without the jumbotron. I could bitch that they had no period-ending horn (due to the AWOL jumbotron, I assume), so they blasted a hand-held airhorn over the PA system instead.

But I really don't care about that stuff. It's pre-season, after all. So far, I have enough to keep me content.

I'll try to get all fired up about something soon and give you something fun to read. Who knows, maybe I'll mistakenly wind up on the Blue Revolution page again....