CALGARY -- Who's on first, What's on second and ... is there any way we can we pull Freddie out of the press box for the third?

This may sound like a comedy routine but no one in Missouri is snickering.

	Fred Brathwaite may be replaced by Tom Barrasso as the Blues' No. 2 goalie.

"Say, who's in tomorrow?" asked defenseman Al MacInnis, teasing.

"I've never seen anything like it," muttered coach Joel Quenneville. "Sure, sometimes teams are forced to go through stretches of goaltending injury problems. But never in my experience to this extent, and this early in a season."

"I don't think we have any more goalies left, anywhere in the organization," exclaimed Cory Stillman. "Outside of the draft picks playing junior, I mean."

To hint that the the St. Louis Blues are going through a netminding crisis at present would be comparable to insinuating that the players have yet to figure out the no-leeway clutch-and-grab rules. At the moment, the Blues have more goalies -- more injured goalies -- than Liberace had candelabras.

"When you think we're not even into the third week of the season and we've already played four of them ..." said MacInnis, unable to hide a grim amusement, or a profound amazement. "It's pretty incredible."

And the fact the Blues are 4-1-1 despite this ongoing game of goaltending musical chairs, and that their team defense ranks a tidy fourth in the league at 1.95 goals allowed per night, is unbelievable. But never fear, help is nonetheless on the way. In a rather surprising form, at that.

With unrestricted free agent Byron Dafoe, late of the Boston Bruins, still in search of gainful employment, the Blues instead chose to plug the rather large leak by signing 37-year-old Tom Barrasso to a one-year deal. Barrasso's prickly persona precedes him, but his cost, a reported $900,000, is infinitely less than what the Blues would've been required to fork out to land Dafoe. And they're banking on Barrasso's appetite to play in what is likely a final chance to prolong his career being enough to override the potential pitfalls in signing him.

How did the Bluenotes get into this mess in the first place? Well ...

Incumbent No. 1 Brent Johnson: High ankle sprain suffered before training camp opened.

Incumbent No. 2 Fred Brathwaite (0-1-1, .872 save percentage): Groin strain (although he was expected to return to active duty Saturday night at Calgary).

Rookie No. 3 Reinhard Divis (2-0-0, .971): Groin strain.

Then as if matters couldn't get any whackier, on Thursday night at Edmonton, No. 4 man Curtis (I'm no relation to Fred) Sanford was felled by a strained Achilles tendon. Into the St. Louis net skated someone whose birth certificate identifies him as Cody Rudkowsky, whose only previous appearance this year was for the East Coast League Trenton Titans.

Brathwaite, meanwhile, hobbled down from the press box to change into his togs and sat on the end of the bench, strictly in an advisory capacity. And damn if Rudowsky didn't wind up a 2-1 winner.

"Three different goalies, three different games, and three goalies with their first NHL wins," said Stillman in amazement. "What are the odds on that happening?

"I know it sounds like I'm just saying this now because of what's happened, but the one consistent throughout our training camp this year was the overall quality of the goaltending. You couldn't tell who was who. Honest. Same mask. Same pads. Same style. But they all stopped the puck."

	“	I'm just going to go out and work my butt off, do whatever it takes, until someone tells me to leave. All I can do is play well enough to make their decision harder. ”
		— Fred Brathwaite, Blues goalie

And, when called upon in the regular season, they continued to stop the puck. Until they found themselves on the trainer's table and injured, that is.

"I think what's helped is that the last two guys were called in during the middle of games, so they had no time to worry about anything," said MacInnis. "They just had to go out and play. They just reacted. You've got to give these guys credit. People may not know who they are, but they've stepped up, stepped up, and won hockey games for us."

That's what general manager Larry Pleau and the Blues expect their incoming veteran to deliver, too. But why take the Barrasso flyer over the safer Dafoe option?

"Part of the reason is that we like (Brent Johnson's) potential. We feel he can be a solid No.1 in this league," said Quenneville. "Money? Yeah, we saved some money (signing Barrasso), but if you check, Barrasso played pretty well last year in Toronto and then did a good job at the Olympics. It's not often you can add an Olympic-caliber goaltender to your team at any time, least of all when you're going through the type of troubles we are at the moment.

"His experience will help us. This is an opportunity for him to get back and establish himself."

After Barrasso passes his physical and Johnson becomes healthy, Brathwaite is the likely odd-man-out. That's ironic, in that he got his major break early in 1999 when the Flames went through a goaltending injury epidemic and Brathwaite was signed -- out of expediency and promixity, mainly -- from the Calgary-based Canadian national team.

"Deju-vu? Yes. But this time I'm at the opposite end, " he said with a sigh. "I can't worry about what's going to happen down the road so I'm not going to speculate. What good does that do? I've gone over it and over it and over it in my mind.

"You're right, I could be the one leaving. Or we (he and Barrasso) could play really well together. I have no idea.

"I'm just going to go out and work my butt off, do whatever it takes, until someone tells me to leave. All I can do is play well enough to make their decision harder."

Never one to take anything for granted, Brathwaite has always joked that he never felt safe enough to unpack his suitcases anywhere he has been.

"Well, I unpacked them this year," he said. "But when I get back home (Saturday) night I may have to pack them up again."

Then again, the way Blues goaltenders are falling so far, he may not.

"The way it's been going," said MacInnis, more truthfully than he may have intended, "we might still have to sign a couple more before this is over."

George Johnson of the Calgary Herald is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.