For those unaware, St. Louis has a hockey team and it’s up for sale again.

Dave Checketts, the owner of the St. Louis Blues since 2005, has put his chunk of the team up for sale after months of trying to find other partners after the bulk of his initial backing left.

So Checketts will step out of the way and put his personal stake on the market with the hope of expediting a sale. Checketts and his investment firm, SCP Worldwide, own approximately 20 percent of the Blues. TowerBrook owns 70 percent. Local beer distributor Tom Stillman and other minority investors account for the other 10 percent.

“It’s not what I wanted to have happened,” Checketts said. “But I can’t make a deal with (TowerBrook) and we agreed a long time ago that if we got to this spot, then I would have to take this step. And now I have to take this step.”

Bummer. Checketts seemed like a great owner. Someone that did everything he could to get this team back on track on the ice and with the fans, turning the Blues in to one of the most fan friendly franchises in the nation. Even better, he invested in the surrounding area, like his work with the Kiel Opera House, which, he told the Post Dispatch’s Bernie Miklasz, he plans to continue with and open on schedule. The fact of the matter is that Checketts wasn’t rich enough to hang in the owner’s box.

So who buys the Blues now? Checketts says he will do everything he can to sell to a local interest that will keep the team in St. Louis, but owners always say that. When it comes down to it, if an offer comes by that they can’t refuse the deal will be done regardless of local affiliation. Hopefully the process is quick and the Blues prove to be a viable enough franchise to draw some interest.

Hell, the Blues might be the only game in town come fall. You think if we all chip in and buy the Blues we can get them to play football or pitch well enough to replace Wainwright?

via STLToday

February 18th, 2011…a day that will live in infamy for St. Louis sports. Well, maybe not…unless you’re really attached to the Rams’ O.J. Atogwe, the Blue’s Eric Brewer and the shell of Jim Edmonds. If you are, go get yourself a coke and try to shake it off! Tomorrow will be better…don’t look at STLToday’s Sports home page though. Actually, just turn away right now, because here it is!

Seriously check this crap out: Every single major sports team in St. Louis lost a player through either trade, release, or retirement.

Throw in an extra point for a mention of Pujol’s eventual leaving and you’ve got one hell of a sports day!

Battle of the Blades is to Canada what Dancing with the Stars is to America. The differences being “Blads” is hockey players instead of D-list celebrities and it’s on ice. So what about Canada? Well former St. Louis Blues badass Kelly Chase is on this season.

If you thought for a second that he’s dancing with Michelle Kwan, you’re a racist. If you thought Not-Michelle Kwan was dancing with late-nineties Brenda Warner, we don’t blame you.

Dancing to Whitesnake’s “Here I Go Again” Yahoo Sports’ recap says of their latest dance:

They pull off a smooth skate highlighted by a huge one-handed lift, complete with fist-pump. What, no headbanging? Judge Sandra praises Kelly’s “nuance and emotion.” No need to drop the gloves tonight.

Sounds like Kelly isn’t doing all that bad and they are certainly doing better than the pairing of Anabelle Langlois and ex-NHLer Georges Laraque who ended up with 12 stitches after an ill-fated practice:

Good luck Chaser!

via Yahoo! Sports

Post updated per reader suggestion. See below original story.

Josh Duhamel, shown here with his husband, is staring in the new movie “Life as We Know It” with Katherine Heigl.The movie is about two people who are polar opposites that have to take care of a baby. Uh oh! Sounds like this isn’t going to be what they signed up for! He’s probably a slob and she’s a little Ms. Perfect. This match up can’t possibly work! …oh wait, now it does! Roll credits.

What was the point of all this? Josh Duhamel rocks a St. Louis Blues hat in the movie, as evidence by these stills pulled from the trailer:

Good to see people out there representing for the Blues! Sure this one “fan” is a made up character in a movie no one will see, but that’s ok. After two wins, St. Louis is all about their slightly less retarded football team so the Blues will take any promotion they can get.

Update! …the baby isn’t a fan of our beloved Blues though. As pointed out by @mattsebek and @thefilesfiles, the baby later poops right in the Blues cap:

The baby is clearly either a Blackhawks fan or a future Blues goalie.

The Blues Win Something! Hello? Hello?! They Won Something. No one cares?

Ok, we might have been overselling it somewhat. They didn’t really win anything…but their stadium did!

According to ESPN, out of the three major sporting venues in St. Louis, only the Blues’ home, the Scottrade Center, score perfect with no “critical violations”. The score is a percentage of vendors with health code violations out of the total vendors.

Scottrade Center
St. Louis Blues
Vendors with critical violations: 0%
Inspection report excerpt: No critical or major violations.

Perfection for Scottrade. Frankly this is not a surprise. The Blues ownership has done very well to help out their venue since signing on a few years back.

Busch Stadium

St. Louis Cardinals
Vendors with critical violations: 12%
Inspection report excerpt: No hand towels at a hand-washing sink caused two stands to incur critical violations.

Busch Stadium comes in second with 12%, because it was missing hand towels. This is surprising news in that we didn’t realize many Cardinal fans actually washed their hands when leaving the john between innings.

Edward Jones Dome
St. Louis Rams
Vendors with critical violations: 21%
Inspection report excerpt: One location got a critical violation for not having hand towels at a sink.

The Rams? Dead last naturally with 21% of the vendors in violation of the health code. We aren’t sure yet if this score includes all the shit the team laid all over the playing surface last year.

In case you were wondering, and we know you were, the over-all lowest scores were dropped at the Colorado Avalanche’s home at the Pepsi Center…

Pepsi Center
Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche
Vendors with critical violations: 67%
Inspection report excerpt: At one bar, inspectors found phorid flies, sometimes called coffin flies, in a bottle of cognac.

…the Miami Heat’s home base, American Airlines Arena, which is apparently not fit for a “king”…

American Airlines Arena
Miami Heat
Vendors with critical violations: 93%
Inspection report excerpt: Critical violations included several safety issues related to electrical wiring and such equipment as gas boilers.

…and Tropicana Field, home of the Rays…

Tropicana Field
Tampa Bay Rays
Vendors with critical violations: 100%
Inspection report excerpt: Several violations addressed dirty countertops, utensils and equipment. Although every report indicated a critical violation, all vendors met basic inspection standards to keep operating.

Looking at this list as a whole consider yourself lucky St. Louis, we have amazing clean sporting arenas compared to the rest of the nation. Oh and if you go to a Royals game, don’t use a knife:

Kauffman Stadium
Kansas City Royals
Vendors with critical violations: 62%
Inspection report excerpt: Inspectors cited one location with multiple violations for having several items that were either above or below safe temperatures; they found food debris on knives stored in a knife rack.

Pretty much one of the worst St. Louis sporting nights I can ever remember.

The Cardinals lose in pretty much the worst way possible to go down 0-2 in the NLDS, right now Mizzou dropped their first game of the season, the Rams still have St. Louis in front of their name, and the Blues lost!

…oh and at the Blues game one of the escalators freaked out, spun up to four times the normal speed and launched four fans right off of it!

As of this writing, there’s pretty much nothing out there on this story from the major sources but we did manage to find an eye-witness account on the STLToday Forums:

I just got off the escalator when it happened. Looked like several minor injuries and a lot of panic. I will say this though…Some D-Bag photographer pushed a limping girl out of the way so he could take pictures of the scene. Several people pushed him away quickly. I hope someone at the post dispatch reads this, and if that was their photographer, their should definitely be punishment.

Yea it started going super fast (like 30-40 mph). They looked like they were snowboarding down a hill. Several people flew into the glass wall of the blue note shop. Then it sounded like someone hit the emergency button, with the sound of squealing brakes, then mass amounts of people falling on top of each other. A lot of people were trying to continue to run down the steps which didn’t help the situation.

On a related note, I did find this youtube video of a lady falling down an escalator.  So there’s that.