St. Louis Blues: Ivan Barbashev Suffers Injury While Playing for Chicago Wolves
The worst-case scenario occurred for Ivan Barbashev, who suffered an injury while playing for the AHL Chicago Wolves during the Blues’ five-day break.
Since they’re off from Tuesday to Saturday while they take their league-mandated five-day bye, the St. Louis Blues sent forwards Ivan Barbashev and Magnus Paajarvi to the AHL Chicago Wolves on Tuesday morning in order to save cap space and keep the young players active. While the hope with these types of moves is always that players can get a little bit of developmental work in, there’s also the chance that an injury will end up occurring in a contest that’s totally inconsequential.
That worst-case scenario occurred on Wednesday, as Barbashev suffered an upper-body injury in the first period of the Wolves’ win over the Cleveland Monsters and did not return. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch‘s Jeremy Rutherford reported that Barbashev’s injury is not considered serious, but the Blues won’t provide a thorough update until Thursday or Friday.
The Blues travel to Chicago to face the Blackhawks on Sunday evening, so it’s possible that they could be without Barbashev for that contest.
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The 21-year-old rookie has played in the Blues’ past 12 games while filling a variety of roles, including centering both the third and fourth lines and, most recently, playing left wing alongside Jori Lehtera and David Perron. He’s got two goals and an assist over that period.
If Barbashev isn’t ready to go by Sunday, the Blues could go in several different directions to fill the void. With Barbashev now having moved to the wing, the most obvious move would be to insert Nail Yakupov, who has played in just one of the Blues’ past eight games, or Dmitrij Jaskin, who was played only twice in 11 games.
If the Blues want to leave both of those players in the press box against the Blackhawks, however, there are a few other players they could turn to. The first would be winger Kenny Agostino, who had an assist in the Wolves’ win and recently impressed during a seven-game stint with the NHL club.
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The other candidate would be Ty Rattie, who had spent the entire season in the NHL between the Blues and Carolina Hurricanes before being reclaimed on waivers by the Blues and sent to the AHL on Sunday. Rattie led the Wolves with four shots on Wednesday