St. Louis Blues Minor League Hit Hard With Injuries

The St. Louis Blues organization has been beset by injury in the 2018-19. The parent club has had enough problems, but those issues run even deeper down in the minor leagues.

The St. Louis Blues have had a lot of injury problems in the 2018-19 season. Fortunately, those injuries have not completely impacted their season outcome.

Two thirds of the top line has been out for parts of the season. Only Ryan O’Reilly, knock on wood, has remained relatively unscathed.

All but five players have missed five or more games throughout the season for the Blues. Despite all that, the San Antonio Rampage have had it even worse.

Minor league hockey is its own animal anyway, especially at the AHL level. If you are doing your job correctly, you are going to have guys going in and out of your lineup all season anyway.

When it is guys making the trip up to the NHL, you don’t mind. When guys go down with injuries, it takes confidence away from both the injured player and the team, overall.

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With that, the Blues announced their minor league affiliate will be without the services of six players to end the season. The team will be without Conner Bleackley, Ville Husso, Jordan Kyrou, Austin Poganski, Trevor Smith and Nikita Soshnikov.

Bleackley was someone many were excited about when the Blues picked him up. He had originally refused to be a part of the Colorado Avalanche franchise. So, when he re-entered the draft after a couple years, the Blues took him.

He has not accomplished much at the NHL level, in fact he has yet to feature in an NHL game. had fallen so far down the depth cart in 2017-18 that he was playing in the ECHL. He ended his time in Tulsa with 19 goals and 38 points.

He carried a little of that over to San Antonio, but not enough. in 57 games this year, he had five goals and 16 points.

Poganski was having a decent season for his first full pro year. In 59 games, he had nine goals and 31 points.

Smith was around the same stat line. He had nine goals and 22 points.

Soshnikov was a semi-surprise in not making the NHL team to begin the year. He was a speedy, tenacious fourth line type that would readily take the body.

Soshnikov could never get it going in 208-19 though. In total, he only featured in 11 games in the AHL.

Husso and Kyrou’s news is the most disappointing. Those are guys the team have penciled into their near future, so missing any amount of time now could stunt their development.

Kyrou was one of the few flourishing in the AHL. He finished his time with San Antonio. In 47 games, he ended up with 16 goals and 43 points. Almost a point per game is not too bad.

Husso had a lot of struggles this season. He was supplanted by Jordan Binnington at the start of the year.

Then, even after Binnington got called up to the NHL, Husso split time. He only featured in 27 games and had a rather disappointing 3.67 goals against and .871 save percentage.

You cannot rely solely on minor league numbers. Word through the grapevine is that Husso never really looked comfortable.

Ultimately, regardless of their production it is disappointing when any player goes down for the rest of the season. The confusing thing is the end of the article says they have not been ruled out of the Blues roster for the playoffs.

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I cannot see a circumstance where any of those names would be called up during the playoffs. Kyrou would be the only one in enough form to provide something and he would be returning from a lower body injury, so he might not have been skating for awhile.

Hopefully, they can all return to full health in short order, regardless.

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