It's being reported that Jori Lehtera, who went under the knife on August 4th, is scheduled to return to practice tomorrow.

That seems way ahead of schedule. If so, this is GREAT news!

St. Louis Blues Verified account
‏@StLouisBlues
Lehtera said he is ahead of schedule in recovering from ankle surgery and will participate in a full team practice tomorrow. #stlblues

He's right on schedule, not ahead of schedule. 6-8 weeks from Aug 4 is a range of Sept 15-29.

It's good that he's back though. It sounds like the problem was that a bone spur was continually slicing into his ankle tendons so yeah, glad they got that removed and he's good to go.

He told one of the Blues bloggers that he had a 1 cm bone spur in his ankle that was slicing his tendons like a salami. OUCH! It will be nice to have him back, but the potential line combinations aren't going to get any clearer. I still think he needs to start at the #3C unless they keep Backes at wing. I'm partial at this point to:

Steen-Stastny-Tarasenko
Schwartz-Backes-Jaskin
Fabbri-Lehtera-Brouwer
Ott-Brodziak-Reaves

I expect Gomez and Paajarvi to be the 13th and 14th forwards to start the season.

Great news. Also, that bone spur sounds absolutely freaking awful!
I'd love to see this at the start of the season.

Steen Stastny Tarasenko
Schwartz Backes Fabbri
Jaskin Lehtera Brouwer
Upshall Brodziak Reaves

extras: Gomez, Paajarvi

STL fan in IA wrote:He's right on schedule, not ahead of schedule. 6-8 weeks from Aug 4 is a range of Sept 15-29.

It's good that he's back though. It sounds like the problem was that a bone spur was continually slicing into his ankle tendons so yeah, glad they got that removed and he's good to go.

Semantics but 6-8 weeks was the point at which he was just supposed to be able to skate again, not practice. We are right at the beginning part of that and he's going through a full practice session?

Either way, this is very good news.

Great news!

Excited to see how he does in his second year. I think his game will be more consistent over the course of the season.

Going to the preseason game tonight. I'll post a report here tonight or tomorrow.

MissouriMook wrote:
Steen-Stastny-Tarasenko
Schwartz-Backes-Jaskin
Fabbri-Lehtera-Brouwer
Ott-Brodziak-Reaves

I expect Gomez and Paajarvi to be the 13th and 14th forwards to start the season.

Did we trade Berglund?

wizard pork sword wrote:

STL fan in IA wrote:He's right on schedule, not ahead of schedule. 6-8 weeks from Aug 4 is a range of Sept 15-29.

It's good that he's back though. It sounds like the problem was that a bone spur was continually slicing into his ankle tendons so yeah, glad they got that removed and he's good to go.

Semantics but 6-8 weeks was the point at which he was just supposed to be able to skate again, not practice. We are right at the beginning part of that and he's going through a full practice session?

Either way, this is very good news.

That's not how I understand injury ranges to work but yeah, it's all semantics at this point.

I'm just glad he's good to go. It'll be interesting to see how the lines shake out.

So, he'll not only start the season in Game 1, but, he'll be mote or less up to speed by then, rather than rusty. That's good news, meaning that Gomez might not ne the 3rd Line centre, except when Backes is shifted to RW in special games.