Dube Is Out Eight Weeks. Now Both of the Blues' New Forwards Are Gone.

Dillon Dube has been sidelined eight weeks with a neck injury, the team announced Saturday. That's the same Dube who won a roster spot out of training camp and was supposed to provide the kind of reliable forward depth the Blues spent the offseason chasing. He's gone before he's played enough games to matter.

The timing stacks badly. Alexey Toropchenko is already at least six weeks out with the shoulder he hurt in the season opener. So the two forwards the organization added this summer to deepen a group that collapsed down the stretch last year are now both watching from the press box. What the offseason was supposed to fix is exactly what's broken right now.

The depth behind them is thin. The right wing position in particular drops off sharply after Jimmy Snuggerud, with Justin Carbonneau next in line and essentially no established production behind him. Robert Thomas remains the one player on this roster who can be counted on to generate offense consistently — and the gap between him and everyone else hasn't gotten smaller. It's gotten wider.

My piece from Wednesday noted the forward situation was already borrowed time after the Chicago loss. That was before Dube's diagnosis. The Blues have a week-plus of games ahead of them and a forward group that looks nothing like what management assembled in July.