Now that the Blues have trimmed their roster to 30 players, they’ve condensed the team into one locker room at their St. Louis Mills practice facility.

In a locker room suited for 23 players, you can imagine the quarters are cramped. The Blues solved part of that problem by putting rookie Alex Pietrangelo in a corner of the room and making him sit in a folding chair. The best part, there’s no place to hang his gear.

Thought you’d enjoy having a look yourself . . .

No respect for the rookie

“He lacks seniority,” Blues coach Andy Murray said. “I’m a big believer in seniority. I don’t care if you’re a (high) draft pick or whatever.”

Pietrangelo laughed it off, and even bragged about his spot.

“Love it,” he said. “Five-thousand square feet . . . walk-out basement . . . it’s got everything.”

This isn’t the first time that Murray made sure a rookie didn’t get a locker before one of his veteran players.

“When I came to camp here, they had Lars Eller in (the main locker room) and one of our American League guys was in the back,” Murray said. “I said, ‘Eller hasn’t done anything yet, get him out of here.’ I didn’t say it in those terms, but I indicated that Eller shouldn’t be there. I go on seniority and years of pro, and not just NHL. A guy that spent 10 years in the minor leagues has more seniority than a guy that’s played (one game) in the NHL.”

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The NHL permits an emergency goalie to travel with teams on overseas trips, and it looks like Ben Bishop will get the nod when the Blues head to Sweden later this week. Bishop is very deserving after a terrific summer of training.

“Ben is way better than he was last year,” Murray said. “He looks so good on the ice right now.”

Some fans were disappointed that Bishop didn’t get a chance to earn the Blues’ backup job this season. I had a conversation with assistant coach Rick Wamsley a few days ago and he had an interesting take on that topic.

“We don’t develop No. 2s,” Wamsley said. “It’s not a lack of confidence. For us, we still see Ben as a future No. 1 goalie and he’s got to play games. Coming up here and getting behind a guy that played as well as Chris Mason, that’s no good for anybody. Ben has got to establish himself as a bona fide guy that can win and take his team deep into the playoffs in the American League and then hopefully he’ll do that for the St. Louis Blues as a No. 1 guy up here.”

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Who’s having the best training camp so far, according to Murray?

“Our best player in training camp has been Jay McClement,” Murray said. “Consistent every single day, great example in everything he does . . . one of the top guys in the conditioning test. I would say he’s been our best player from day one. I don’t usually throw those bouqets out there, but he’s been our best.”

Who’s had the worst camp?

“You can (throw out) some names to me, but I’m a poker player . . . I don’t have any tells,” Murray told reporters. “There’s a few guys in camp that we’re giving the benefit of the doubt to . . . they haven’t had very good camps. We talked about that this morning in our meeting. When you have those meetings, you want the guys walking out of the room saying, ‘Is he talking about me?’ A few of them, I indicated, ‘Yeah I was talking about you.’”

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Beginning Tuesday, the Blues are ending each practice this week with a shootout drill. Each of the 26 skaters in camp gets two shots. The results haven’t been good, unless you’re a fan of the goalies.

Tuesday’s 1st round: Paul Kariya, David Backes, Cam Janssen and Darryl Sydor were the only players to convert their chance.

Tuesday’s 2nd round: Backes . . . yes, Backes was the only one out of 26 skaters to make his shot.

I will post Wednesday’s results later today.

JR

JR