Following the Blues’ 4-2 win over Atlanta on Sunday, the team boarded a plane around 6 p.m. Eastern time and was scheduled to land in St. Louis around 7:30 last night. But because of a mechanical issue, the Blues are still in Atlanta.

Coaches and players sat on the plane for about two hours last night while mechanics attempted to fix an issue with the gyroscope. When it was learned that the problem couldn’t be corrected last night, the Blues walked about 200 yards to a nearby hotel and spent the night. Fortunately, the hotel happened to have roughly 40 vacant rooms.

Before the plane issues, the players had planned to spend Sunday night at the house of Keith Tkachuk to celebrate Tkachuk’s 1,000th point in the NHL. Instead, they gathered as a team at the hotel bar and made the best of the delay. Blues GM Larry Pleau bought the players a round of drinks early in the night. Because of the rigorous travel schedule in the NHL, teams aren’t able to have many outings on the road like Sunday night, so perhaps the plane issues weren’t as bad as first imagined.

Well, until this morning.

Today’s flight was scheduled to depart at 9 a.m., but there were more issues with the plane, so another airline is coming in to pick up the Blues around 3 o’clock Eastern time. “We didn’t have this much trouble in the Western league,” Blues defenseman Eric Brewer said. “If something was wrong with the bus, we just kept driving it.”

If all goes well, the Blues will be back in St. Louis late this afternoon. They’ll have only a few hours at home before waking up for practice Tuesday morning and then catching a flight to Minnesota Tuesday afternoon.

Who said life in the NHL wasn’t fun?

JR