As the Blues plan to start another week in their young season, they face a lot of questions.  Sitting with a 4-4-1 record, will the young gun offense finally click all at once?  Will Alex Pietrangelo stay an NHL player, take the familiar trip to Niagara in the OHL, or even pack his bags for another NHL team (message boards and blogospheres alike are jam-packed with whispers of all three scenarios)?  Will the recent rash of injuries (T.J. Oshie’s appendectomy, D.J. King’s hand, wrist, or finger injury and Carlo Colaiacovo’s “upper body injury” to name a few) affect the Blues this year the same way similar injury plagues hurt them the previous year?  But what about the netminders?

The goalies entered the season, and spent the summer for the most part, as the biggest question mark facing the Blues. However, nine games later you’ll rarely hear or read the names Mason or Conklin without a hypothetical exclamation point ending that thought (think, “and MASON with a HUGE glove save!”). 

The numbers don’t lie.  Last season Ty Conklin finished with a 25-11-2 record and a .909 save percentage in backup duty for the Detroit Red Wings.  Already he’s 2-1 with a .918 save percentage and a 2.40 Goals against average.  Not bad numbers for a backup ‘tender, especially for a team that doesn’t score a lot of goals.  However, the bigger story is Chris Mason.  Coming into the season experts and fans alike wondered aloud whether Mason would ever replicate his 2.41 goals against average or his .916 percentage.  They said he was an underdog-type goalie, never able to handle outright having the starting job.  They said he had taken the starting job in Nashville from Thomas Vokoun, just to lose it early the following season.  His numbers are good (2-3-1, .910, 2.40), but that’s not what’s so impressive.  What’s most impressive about Chris is that he’s achieved those numbers in the games that he’s played. 

Take the game on October 10th against Los Angeles.  The Blues put 30 shots on Jonathon Quick, but fourteen of them came in the final frame.  Twenty-one of the Kings’ twenty-six shots came in the first two periods and the Blues lost 2-1.  How about the following game in Phoenix five days later?  Mason made thirty-one saves in a 3-2 OT loss on a questionable goal.  You can even make a positive argument for Mason following the game against the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Sure he let in four goals in two periods, but he also made thirty-one saves and had a save percentage of .886 in a game that even Andy Murray described as total domination by the Penguins.  What the numbers don’t show in the Penguins game was how Mason battled to make every save possible, and he did make a lot of big ones in an attempt to keep the Blues in the game. 

The Blues offense will get it together, that much is certain.  There’s too much talent and too much desire on this team not to make a strong push soon.  The defense is good, and getting better each game.  Erik Johnson continues to show why the Blues took him #1 overall in 2006, and Alex Pietrangelo got to make his first real contributions in the game against Dallas on Saturday following Carlo Colaiacovo’s injury.  It’s good to know that when the players out on the ice get it together, they won’t have to worry about the two guys manning the net.

Quick hits, news and notes.

John Davidson told me on Saturday night that the Blues aren’t going make any excuses based on the early plague of the injury bug this season.  Regarding the T.J. Oshie appendectomy, he said, “One thing about our organization is we’re kind of used to it, so it’s not a shock to us anymore.”

Davidson added that he was glad T.J. was able to finish the game before his symptoms appeared because it was one of his better games all year.

Don’t expect Yan Stastny to wear a Blue Note anytime soon.  Word is he’s the captain of the Rivermen, the team’s leading scorer with three goals and six assists, and would have to clear waivers if called up.  The Blues will wait on him.  Those wanting to see Lars Eller in a Blues uniform won’t see him for at least a couple of months as he continues to progress and adapt to North American hockey down in the AHL. 

Congratulations to Alex Pietrangelo for scoring his first NHL goal.  It was fitting that it came in arguably his best game so far in his career.  I asked him what it felt like watching that first puck go in the net, and he told me he didn’t actually get to see it cross the line and thought David Perron had actually tipped it in.  In a related note it was cool to see Perron immediately fetch the puck for Petro.  In his third season, he’s the elder statesman of the young guys, so it’s nice to see him looking out for them. 

Finally, this has been reported on a bunch, but it was great to see Wendy Pleau make her return to the Scottrade Center.  The wife of Blues GM Larry Pleau survived two bouts with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and attended her first game in nearly two years.  It was fitting that she made her return on Hockey Fights Cancer Night.