John Davidson joins JR Live Thursday

I’ve been hinting at it for a few weeks, but now it’s official. Blues President John Davidson is expected to take your questions this Thursday at  2 p.m.

Davidson will answer as many questions as possible in the hour-long format. So please come with your thought-provoking Blues’ inquiries and let’s turn this into a hit.

If all goes well Thursday with JD, we hope to  make Blues players available to readers in the future.

Regarding tonight’s game against Columbus, I have just a few notes from practice this morning.

As I wrote in today’s P-D, Blues coach Andy Murray is stressing more shots.

“Everybody in practice yesterday was yelling ‘Shoot’ because I was on them so much,” Murray said.

Murray said the Blues have been passing up good shooting opportunities.

“I think they are,” he said. “Sometimes they may not be good opportunities to score directly, but they may create good opportunities with a rebound. If we don’t get the puck to the net, to that funnel, you never know what you’re going to get. If you don’t get the puck to the net, you’ve got no chance to score. So we’ve got to get pucks to the net.”

It seems that there are a lot of things a coach could tell his players to do on the ice, and it’s easier said than done. But to me, shooting the puck more doesn’t seem like something that would be difficult to execute.

“You’ve got to remember how fast things are happening out there on the ice,” Blues center Andy McDonald said. “You’ve got to rely on your instincts . . . what you’ve done your whole career. When there’s an opportunity to shoot, you’ve got to shoot. When you pass, you pass.

“What’s happen probably is that we’re not scoring, so you want to simplify your game and maybe concentrate on shooting a little bit more. You get into those prime shooting areas in the offensive zone and we’ve got to get guys going to the net. If we get that happening,  we’ll generate some goals and it will just become more automatic.”

McDonald says he’s feeling fine after making his return to the lineup Saturday against Carolina. He played 19:29 and had one shot. One sign of him being more comfortable on the ice since suffering the pulled chest muscle is that McDonald was taking face-offs against the Hurricanes.
“The injury is to the point where it’s strong enough,” McDonald said. “I don’t think anybody feels 100 percent. You do what you can. It’s strong enough and that’s the big issue for me. Is there strength there? It seems to be. So I’m getting better.”

The Blues’ lineup is the same tonight as Friday’s lineup, but as I’ve mentioned before, I’m sometimes not at liberty to print the lines in the afternoon at Andy Murray’s request. I think it’s safe to say, though, that you haven’t seen these combinations much this year.

I did jot down the Blues power-play units at Monday’s practice.

No. 1: Kariya, McDonald, Backes, Boyes and Brewer

No. 2: Tkachuk, Stempniak, Perron, Backman and E. Johnson.

They will be facing Columbus’  Fredrik Norrena tonight in goal. Pascal Leclaire has a viral infection. Steve Mason will be the backup. This is something to keep an eye on if Norrena has to leave for any reason. Mason recently led Team Canada to the World Junior Championship title, and made a 10-hour flight back home from the Czech Republic this weekend.

That’s all for now. Don’t forget to get your questions ready for JD on Thursday.

JR