Blues Game Day: More COVID concerns

In today’s 10 a.m. video from Colorado, columnist Ben Hochman looks at Craig Berube’s strong quotes about Vladimir Tarasenko and what No. 91 needs to do in Game 2. Also, a happy birthday shoutout to a former St. Louis football great. And, as always, Hochman chooses a random St. Louis Cards card from the hat. Ten Hochman is presented Monday-Friday by The Milliken Hand Rehabilitation Center.

David Perron, Jake Walman and Nathan Walker weren’t as lucky. They remained on the NHL’s COVID list released Wednesday — they all have been on the list for days — and thus were not eligible to play Wednesday.

Among the four Blues, it’s possible that Scandella was taking a “maintenance” day Wednesday morning to rest a minor ailment. He did so at Monday’s morning skate but then played 20 minutes 5 seconds that night against the Avalanche in the Blues’ 4-1 loss.

As for Schwartz, his absence in the morning was noteworthy during power play work, when Ivan Barbashev and Zach Sanford were on the second unit instead of Schwartz and Tyler Bozak.

Bozak was moved up to the first unit to replace Tarasenko in practice.

Blues general manager Doug Armstrong did not return a text message seeking comment.

As it turned out, the Blues weren’t the only NHL playoff team dealing with questionable test results.

“This morning, we became aware of certain test results involving multiple players on two clubs (the St. Louis Blues and the Vegas Golden Knights) that had indicated positive results for the COVID-19 virus,” the NHL said in its statement.

“Because those reported results emanated from the same laboratory, and due to other peculiarities and similarities as among the test results themselves, an investigation was initiated into the possibility that the initial test results reported may have been in error. “