I’ve got a few notes about tonight’s game, but this report will be pretty short because we have a Blues chat at 1 p.m. I hope you guys will join and ask some questions.

** It looks like Martin Rucinsky will be back in the lineup against Florida. Rucinsky has been out with a hand injury. He’ll replace D.J. King. “Martin is 100 percent,” Murray said.

** Paul Kariya will play tonight after missing practice Wednesday. His injury hasn’t been disclosed, but he took a slash Tuesday on Doug Weight’s first goal. “Not a nice feeling,” Kariya said. “But I’m ready to go.  Everything’s fine.”

** Kariya on what the Blues have been going through the past two games: “I think Colorado was a little bit of an aberration . . . certainly the worst game of our season so far. Tuesday, I think way too many penalties. You can’t play in this league when you’re in the box, whether the other team scores or not. It just takes so much momentum away from the team. Before the last two games, we have been pretty good on the discipline side of it. We’ve got to get back to four penalties or under and I think that will help us win games.”

** Murray on monitoring Legace: “Manny is kind of his own doctor I guess. He kind of lets us know how  things feels. We don’t expect to have any major problems with him. It’s something that we have to monitor . . . we knew that going in. But we expect Manny to play in over 60 games this year. That’s what we need out of our No. 1 guy.”

** Murray said that after further review, Eric Brewer’s game against Edmonton Tuesday wasn’t as bad as it appeared. “We thought in reality when we looked at the game, he played pretty well. He had two things that we didn’t like in that game. One would be the turnover pass that led to the goal, which we think our goalie should have stopped. And the other one was the last penalty. Other than that . . . his penalty-killing was outstanding. We let Eric know how important he is to us, how well we think he’s played and let’s eliminate the odd turnover. But his game upon review was much better than what it appeared because of that first mistake. He seemed to get people’s attention that way.”

** Murray on Doug Weight’s recent success (four goals in last three games): “I think Doug has played better for quite a while. The big thing is some pucks have fallen in for him that normally weren’t going in earlier in the year. I think his play the last while has been pretty consistent.”

**Our condolescencs to former Blues coach Mike Kitchen, whose father passed in the last 24 hours. Mike made it to St. Louis with the Panthers, but then flew to Toronto (I believe) last night to prepare for the funeral.

JR