Baseball? What's baseball? Blues at Stars GDT

I keep hearing about a rally squirrel around town. And while I think squirrels are pretty cool*, they still aren't cool enough to make me turn off a hockey broadcast in favor of a baseball contrast. By that I mean any hockey broadcast. A Blues broadcast? Oh, hell, no.

So while some of you will only check in on the Blues after the Cardinals game is over and some of you will be flipping back and forth between the Blues and the Cards, I will be besties with those of you who tune into the hockey game, set the volume level too high and then put your remote up on top of your headrest so it doesn't get in your way for the next three hours.

And what to make of this game against the Stars? Clearly the Blues need to be more like Monday afternoon against Cal and Gary than Saturday night against the Snoresville Predators, but what is up with these Stars? Three games in, they are 2-1 with a grand total of three goals in their two wins (their last win was a 2-1 shootout win). Their one loss? a 5-2 rampage by the Blackhawks.

The Stars are having a hard time scoring, obviously, and neither Michael Ryder, who is over the hockey hill, but still expected to be an offensive player for Dallas and Brendan Morrow are still scoreless on the year. Loui Eriksson has as many goals as Steve Ott. Sheldon Souray, fresh off his banishment to the hockey hinterlands by Edmonton, has three points, all assists, and leads the next closest scorer on the team by two points.

The only reason this pop-gun of a hockey team has two wins is easy to figure out: Kari Lehtonen is all that is man. In his two wins his GAA is 0.97 and his save percentage is 97.5%. If you're new to hockey, we call those numbers "Freakalicious." The backup, Andrew Raycroft, is, as you remember, awful. His one start earned him a 4.08 GAA and a save percentage of 86.7%, which, if you are new to hockey, are known as "Assbagery."

Alas, we won't be seeing AHL Raycroft tonight in net, so the Blues will have to work hard to crack Lehtonen.

The Blues seemed to have put their game one jitters behind them when they took the ice on Monday, let's hope that is true and we don't see another tentative, skittery team tonight. Jaroslav Halak still needs to have that one dominant game to get himself going, though if he gets five goals of support again, that should be confidence enough.

Game is at 7:30, FSN is the TV network, KMOX is the radio and Defending Big D is the opposition's website, if you're into that sort of thing. This, then, would be your GDT. It's a party, yo, let's break some shit.

*A couple squirrel sidebars for you:

1. A couple years after graduation, my college roommate called me to let me know that he was at home watching three squirrels on his fence. It started as one squirrel humping another one, but then the third one ran up to the end of the line and started humping away too. Some sort of squirrel daisy chain? You rodents are the craziest!

2. In college, our room had a window that opened out onto a deck for the house. We started feeding our leftovers to a squirrel that lived in the tree right by the deck. Eventually he got so bold as to come right up to our window searching for pizza crusts and other assorted flotsam and jetsam. One morning I woke up to the sound of one roommate, who had been sleeping on the couch, grunting and making weird yipping sounds. I looked down and he was trying to shoo away our squirrel, who was now sitting on our couch, eating some food. That fat bastard finished his food and then calmly turned and jumped out the window.

What a cocky, fat little bastard. How could you not respect him?