Injury Update from St. Louis

The St. Louis Blues have been occupying my injury news page with a number of players all season and it looks like a few of those names will continue to be on there for varying lengths of time.  On Thursday, Andy McDonald was put on the injured reserve, likely for an indefinite period of time, with a concussion, Erik Johnson was diagnosed with a mild knee sprain and is day-to-day, while Alex Pietrangelo is still hurting with his upper-body injury.

The loss of McDonald will definitely hurt the Blues' offense during this next stretch run, since he is a big part of it when he's healthy.  The Blues were already without other key pieces to their offense and this just becomes another hurdle for the team to overcome.

McDonald hasn't quite been the offensive force that he has been known to be, but with a lot of the help around him falling to injury as well, it shouldn't come as a great surprise.  In 25 games this season, McDonald has 8 goals and 9 assists for 17 points.

The news on Johnson isn't too bad, as his tests just came back with a mild sprain and he was able to skate through a practice after the injury occurred, so he'll likely be a game-time decision when the Blues take on the Sharks on Saturday night.  Missing a game or two shouldn't come as a surprise, but I'm sure if he can play through the pain, he will.

In 29 games this season, Johnson has only scored 1 goal and 9 assists for the Blues, which is down from my expectation of the dynamic blueliner.  I was thinking this could be the season where he really breaks out offensively, but that has yet to happen for him.  The talent is definitely there, he just needs to channel it.

The concussion news is not good for Neil, who has McDonald in the draft this year.   Neil is sitting in 9th place in the standings, 26 points out of the money and now he has just lost his 9th round draft pick.  The 9th round doesn't have a great deal of high expectations, but McDonald could have been a pretty good bargain at that pick, if he was to have stayed healthy all year.

With the other injury update, Stacey is awaiting news on whether or not his 5th round pick will be ready to go before too long.  Taking a defenseman as high as the 5th round (or higher) usually means high offensive expectations for the player, which likely haven't been met.  Any long-term time on the list may be damaging to Stacey's 11th place position.

Link to the Injury/News Page