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Some Blues Looking To Play, May Head Overseas For Lockout

Elite Prospects, which is the go-to site for stats of European leagues, has a handy tracker of confirmed plans and rumors regarding NHL players playing during the lockout. It's a pretty long list, and a lot of it is made up of teams sending eligible players to their respective AHL franchises. It's entertaining to see the amount of guys heading to leagues that are so "beneath" the NHL in talent -- imagine, if you will, Joe Thornton and Rick Nash demolishing the rest of the SEL while playing for Davos. Heck, Evgeny Malkin will probably lead the KHL in goals after a week.

But the desire to keep playing (and keep getting paid something for doing it) is high, and you can't blame the guys. Several members of the Blues will be headed overseas to maintain their skating legs. Patrik Berglund will be playing for Västerås of Allsvenskan, whose website is heralding Berglund's arrival as an "Interview with a Bump!" Thank you, Google Translate.

A rumor that David Backes will be playing with Langnau of the NLA is just that right now: a rumor. Vladimir Sobotka, however, will be playing for HC Slavia Praha of the Czech League. Their logo is apparently a demented satanic polar bear, so Sobe should fit in well. I would attempt to translate what is on the Slavia Praha website, but Google Translate is worse than usual with Czech, apparently. All that I got out of it is that Sobotka is happy to go play at home.

No one else on the team is confirmed to be playing overseas right now, though Alex Steen is trying to figure stuff out with Modo. He's training with them now a he usually does over the off-season, and with the disastrous start the team's gotten this year, he'd probably be a huge help.

Any others signing up overseas right now? No, but as Jeff Quirin at Hockeybuzz points out, there are more than enough European players on the Blues to do so.