"We've seen this special breed of athlete before in St. Louis. During the 1960s, Johnny Roland was a multi-dimensional football threat at the University of Missouri. Roland played running back and defensive back, both with All-American aplomb. He ran back kicks and punts, even threw the occasional pass. He was a John of all trades. During the early late 1970s and early '80s, the football Cardinals made the most of Roy Green's talents. Green once returned a kick 106 yards for a touchdown. In 1981, he had three pass interceptions as a defensive back and 33 pass receptions for 708 yards as a receiver. He was a Roy for all reasons. During the late 1980s, the Cardinals had a baseball chameleon in Jose Oquendo, adaptable to any position or situation. In 1987, the switch-hitting Oquendo batted .286 with a .408 on-base percentage while playing eight different positions, including pitcher. He was a veritable can of WD-40, the Cardinals' "Secret Weapon." As the Blues prepare for the 2010-2011 regular season opener against the Philadelphia Flyers on Saturday at Scottrade Center, they also are blessed with such an athlete. Like those predecessors in other sports, Alex Steen has the ability to impact a game in multiple ways. He came to the Blues by trade in 2008 wearing a defensive label, carrying third- and fourth-line minutes. He has since graduated into a model with considerably more depth, a player who can create and defend, who can quarterback a power play and energize a penalty kill. Steen not only defends, he must be defended. With a career-high 24 goals last season, the former first-round draft pick (2002) of the Toronto Maple Leafs became much more than complementary role player. He became a weight-bearing wall in the Blues' rebuilding. Make up your own moniker, Alexander The Great, the Steen Machine, the Bossa Nova From Manitoba ... you can make a case for the 26-year-old Steen as the Blues' most valuable player. "The difficult part about Alex is when you come in after the first period and you look at the sheet and he's played almost half the period," Blues coach Davis Payne said. "So that's where the difficulty lies, in just how many situations we can use him. And we have to manage that. We have to look at how effective he's going to be ... if we played him in all the situations he's capable of playing in, he'd probably run out of gas in the second period."" http://www.stltoday.com/sports/hockey/professional/article_d9a2c2b9-070a-5575-9020-d7c5dc016d3f.html
