Andy Mcdonald

The offensive side of the red line is not the one that aged Blues fans may be used to.

The days of Adam Oates or Pierre Turgeon are over in St. Louis.  It is hard to find which Blue may stand out from the rest, much like the start of last season.  Brad Boyes and David Backes took that spot over with relative ease during the Blues' amazing playoff run.

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If you have ever seen the movie “Slap Shot,” you probably know that player/coach Reg Dunlop got pretty annoyed by people telling him how to run his team.  In a bar, a man approached Dunlop and simply stated, “Get the power-play going, eh?” Reg’s response:  “Yea, we’re working on it,” while looking away and paying attention to something else going on in the distance.  To me, I feel like head coach Andy Murray has the same response to media and the St. Louis Blues fans.  It doesn’t seem to me that Murray is putting an honest effort to improve the Blues’ power-play. 

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The first day for the Blues’ training camp is officially in the books.  I was only able to stay until noon, but got a pretty good look at what the coaches were expecting.  They pretty much took the day to get the players ready for more vigorous training in the next few days.  They ran one drill in the hour and a half that I attended, and it seemed to just give an idea of how in shape the players truly are after their long summer.  They set up cones at the ends of the rink, and they had about eight players at a time skate back and forth at the sound of a tone played over the loud speaker.  Each time the players had to skate a little harder, and stop on a dime when hitting the next set of cones.  This is a drill that is run purely for endurance and agility training, not to mention speed and quickness of the feet.  I was able to make many observations while watching.

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