St. Louis Blues invite puppy to practice in futile attempt to stop punching each other in the heads

As we already touched on this week, it's not a great time to be a St. Louis Blues fan. They're currently sitting third from bottom in the Western Conference, leading the dreaded (and similarly embattled) Blackhawks by a point and the Kings by one more than that. Worse than their league position, however, is the way they've been handling it, getting caught on camera beating the inadequacy out of each other during practice on Monday. Suffice to say, this makes Chicago's college intern head coach look positively adult by comparison.

So how did the St. Louis Blues leadership hierarchy decide to handle the recent explosion of Blues-on-Blues crime? Well, by bringing in a puppy of course, because no one has ever had an argument in front of a puppy...

OK, OK. So pretty cute. Barclay—the Blues' unofficial office puppy—even tries to steal a stick, because dogs love nothing more than smacking you in the back of the legs with a giant, slobbery stick. But as particularly cynical Blues fans will note, the Blues are doing exactly as much practicing with a puppy on the ice as they were while throwing haymakers at each other's brains: Exactly zero. For a team currently in the Lose for Hughes sweepstakes, perhaps that's a good thing, but there's a lot of hockey left to be played and if the Blues get ice cream sandwiches every time something goes wrong this season, they're not even going to be able to skate come April.