Less than 24 hours after the St. Louis Blues saw their losing streak run to four games, they got more bad news. Yet another player was added to the injured reserve list.
Mackenzie MacEachern is the latest in a long line of fairly prominent names to be placed on IR for the Blues. While St. Louis is still in the thick of things in the playoff race, they would have no luck at all if not for bad luck when it came to the injury bug.
It feels like every season gets worse these last few years. Obviously, 2018-19 is an outlier since the Blues had relative health, but they have missed a lot of games the last few seasons.
It’s been a tough stretch for MacEachern. Despite seeing ice time on and off during the 2019 playoffs, MacEachern was often a healthy scratch during 2019-20.
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He did feature in 51 games. He only managed less than nine minutes on the ice though.
Due to what was once a very deep roster, MacEachern barely saw the gameday rink to start 2021. He began the year on the taxi squad.
Despite this, he took the next-man up mentality when given a shot. In 17 games, he averaged 9:29 and also scored a goal as well as an assist.
Those aren’t gaudy numbers, but that’s solid production for a fourth line player.
There was no indication of what the injury was, other than the standard upper-body response. There is no indication of how long he might be out.
MacEachern joins a disturbingly long list of hurt players. The Blues are still without Tyler Bozak, Robert Thomas, Ivan Barbashev, Colton Parayko and Jacob de La Rose.
One would assume that Nathan Walker will be reinserted into the lineup one game after being sat down. The Blues also have Sam Anas and Austin Poganski to select from.
Fans can only hope these injuries clear up come playoff time. St. Louis has a strong will, but the mistakes are mounting and you can sense they are holding on for dear life until help arrives.