How to spend your time and money on the Blues during the lockout

I found myself downtown with some time to kill this week and found myself wandering over to the Blues pro shop at the DrinkScotch Center. Normally I do that during the season and try to convince myself that I desperately, truly and absolutely need yet another Blues shirt or hat (or picture or game used stick or keychain or...), but I haven't been by the ol' money sinkhole in a while.

What better time to swing in and see what Carlo Colaiacovo merchandise is now 50% off. "Hey," I thought, "Maybe I can get them to sell me a No. 28 jersey for half off and then peel off that nameplate and put on a "Walker" in it's place. It'd go nicely with my signed set of Big Country team pucks anyway."

Alas, it was not to be - surprisingly all the soon-to-be Matt Walker gear was nowhere to be found. Unless, of course, you want a game-worn Colaiacovo jersey, which would set you back about $300. Or you could buy the home and away set for about $550 and then, well, then you'd own that.

Maybe you're feeling like you want to be like the cool kids and get a college jersey from one of the Blues' alma maters. David Backes' Minnesota-Mankato? T.J. Oshie's North Dakota with the controversial Sioux Indianhead? The Erik Johnson Minnesota Gophers? Or maybe you could kill two birds with one stone and go get a hall of famer Blue AND his college jersey, right? Then I have the one for you: The Brent Hull Minnesota-Duluth. Brent Hull you say?

Brent Hull, I say.

Hurm. This isn't going that well, is it? Frankly, the Blues are having a bit of a hard time finding non-current player content for their own website. How bad is it getting over at the Official Wehome Of Your Locked Out St. Louis Blues? Well, they did do an interview with Ryan Johnson. In case you were wondering, yes, he took pride in blocking shots. No word on why he felt like he had to turn around backwards to do it most of the time.

The Blues Mothership also has a story about Bluie helping to build a playground. Because you know what's helpful on a construction site? A furry who can't swing a hammer and isn't wearing pants.

Oh, they also have not one, not two, but three invitations on the front page to buy season tickets. Riiiiight.

So, as I was wandering the racks (and racks) of Blues playoff t-shirts (buy one get one, y'all!) and then scrolled though the eBay aisles and then perused the Blues homepage, I started to think that maybe spending money on these lockout teams and their lockoutee players seemed dumb. Instead, I decided to just save my money and do like Brad Lee has been doing: just harass every official outlet whenever they make an announcement on Twitter. @StLouisBlues and @louisSTLBlues and others have no choice but to let you vent and annoy and antagonize.

It's fun, it's free and it feels good. Which is about the only good thing we have going during this lockout.