With only 13 games to go, the Blues stand one point out of 8th place in the Western Conference standings.   Let's take a closer look at the remaining schedule to judge how close the Blues are to making the playoffs.

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These are trying times for Blues fans.

Despite some recent success, the offense has returned to 05-06 levels.   To top things off, the Blues had an uninspired trade deadline, with acquiring neither high draft choices, nor anyone worth mentioning in the Blues long term plans.   Fans can accept if their team is bad, especially if the franchise is headed in the right direction...but the last week has many questioning the direction of this bad team.

Andy Murray seems to be thrilled with the idea of retarding the youth movement by restricting Erik Johnson's ice time (despite him often being the Blues best defenseman), and sitting David Perron in the pressbox.   I can't want to see how he treats prospects like T.J. Oshie, Patrik Berglund, Lars Eller, and Ian Cole when this team is forced to rely on cheap youngsters.

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It's almost that magical time of year again....when training camps open and everyone comes up with their predictions and line combos.

It's also the time of year when most of the predictions and line combos are based on EA Sports NHL series player ratings and kool-aid fantasies.   To those who this describes I'd like to say the following:

Yes, we know that every team is going to win the cup this year, and that career 8 goal per season guy is going to finally break out and bury 40 goals this year.   Furthermore, we all understand that if we analyze your premonition, then we are insulting your manhood and as such it's a reasonable next step to question our general intelligence and threaten bodily harm.   We get it.   You know everything about hockey.

Now that we've got that out of the way, I'd like to take a statistical look the upcoming season.   I'd like to take a step back from figuring out who's going to center Paul Kariya to look at how the team will perform as a whole.

As I have discussed before, teams typically don't drastically change from year to year.    Teams that allow 300 goals don't cut it back to sub-200 the next year, and teams that score 200 goals bump it up to 300.  

With that reality in mind, the goal of this article is to look at the statistics of the NHL and how they are good for predicting future success. 

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I'm extremely sorry for not reporting this on time, but I have had some recent internet troubles and been busy with a few other things.

Reported back on July 21, Gary Bettman is being accused by Jim Balsillie of stepping in and stopping the sale of the Preditors from current owner Craig Leipold to Balsillie. The cause seems to be from Balsillie's desire to move the team to Canada.

After the league tried to force last minute regulation on Balsillie last year when he had been initially approved as the new owner of the Pittsburgh Penguins (one of which would have forced him to keep the team in Pittsburgh), Balsillie pulled out of the deal.

Now Balsillie is starting to provide base evidence of Bettman ordering Leipold to "cease and desist" from negotiations with Balsillie.

Within the story there are several claims hearsay evidence to show Bettmans interferience and has yet to recieve a response from Bettman, but denials were issued through league spokesman Gary Meagher.

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Just reported, the Blues signed forward Paul Kariya formally of the Nashville Predators

It appears to be a three year deal.

"Paul gives us instant scoring up front as well as bringing an entertaining brand of hockey to the St. Louis Blues" said team President John Davidson.

Thought the team has been consistantly saying there were not looking to make a splash in the free agency market, Kariya was ranked by many to be a very good second tier forward in free agency. So far financial details have not been released, but below is the announcement from the Blues.

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