Well done, Blues fans! Very, very well done -- great job welcoming the team back to the ice.

Announced crowd of 5,500 on hand for today's #stlblues practice. Pretty impressive turnout.

— B.J. Rains (@BJRains) January 13, 2013

First off, that's a lot of people to watch something that's not even a game. Second off, as Randall Ritchie of the BlueNoteZone Blog pointed out, that's five hundred people more than the Winnipeg Jets had at their practice and three thousand more than the Ottawa Senators had (also, nearly 4K more than the Hurricanes). Heck, the gates to get in looked like a regular season game.

I know it's free and blah blah blah whatever, but it still bodes well for the team once the season gets started, and it just goes to show that just because a team is Midwestern and mid-market doesn't mean that there aren't fans. Don't forget, if you have shots from today's practice that you'd like to see in a Game Time slide show, e-mail them to us at stlouisgametime@gmail.com.