By Brad Lee
The Blues cut their roster to 32 players Tuesday. The competition for the backup goaltending job was won by Hannu Toivonen. That means goaltender Jason Bacashihua is headed back to Peoria. The other notable name headed back to Peoria is defenseman Jeff "Please Don't Mention My Role In The Pronger Trade" Woywitka -- if they both clear waivers today. Andy Strickland is reporting both players cleared waivers.
Bacashihua made it simple for the team by having a crappy pre-season. The Cash Man had a 4.90 goals-against average and no wins or loses in 49 minutes while Toivonen was 1-1 with a 3.16 in 56 minutes of action. Both are former first-round picks traded to the Blues by their original teams after not living up to expectations.
In all honesty, Bacashihua should have seen this coming when they traded Carl Soderberg to Boston for Toivonen this summer. Hell, the team even brought in aging Euro-goalie Jusso Riksman to compete for the job, and he had the best pre-season numbers of the three with 2.18 goals-against in 55 minutes. Bacashihua had the opportunity the last two years to earn more minutes and more faith from the organization when Curtis "Made of Glass" Sanford went down with injury. And he didn't do it. In the spring of 2006 he even was arrested for driving under the influence.
Let us know in the comments what you think of this move and if you think Bacashihua has a future with the team, especially with the logjam of goaltenders in Peoria  (Riksman, Bacashihua, Marek Schwarz, Chris Beckford-Tseu and Mike McKenna).
Oh, one other thing. Patrik Berglund was sent back to his team in Sweden for hopefully just one more year. David Perron still is with the big team and may still have a shot to avoid going back to juniors.