MARYLAND HEIGHTS, Mo. -- St. Louis Blues general manager Doug Armstrong provided updates on two veteran forwards before the regular-season opener on Thursday against the Minnesota Wild.

Oskar Sundqvist is week-to-week with a lower-body injury and Milan Lucic, in camp on a professional tryout, will also rehab a lower-body injury and at some point, extend his PTO in 10-day increments.

For Sundqvist, he will miss at least the first three games of the season after injuring himself at the end of practice on Sunday in which he needed help off the ice.

"He’s got a lower-body injury; he’s going to be week-to-week," Armstrong said. "He won’t be playing obviously against Minnesota or on our road trip. Don’t think it’s serious, but it’s week-to-week.

"... I felt so bad for him. We had a little family event on Sunday and his wife was here about five feet from him when he went flying into the boards, last drill of training camp. I felt bad for him, but he's such an upbeat guy. Again, this isn't something that we're concerned about. Week-to-week is more like a week. So yeah, I feel bad for him because he continually puts the work in and one day his luck is going to turn the other way."

Blues coach Jim Montgomery said, "It's not his knee or hip. It's lower body, like muscle-related so it's good. We know a target date when he'll be back. That's really good and relatively soon."

For Lucic, his PTO has expired, and he will be given as much leeway as needed considering earlier in training camp, he was dealing with a groin injury, and whether he gets a contract or not is clearly up in the air.

"He has to knock out somebody healthy on our roster and we’re not there yet," Armstrong said. "... We were hoping to have the answer by now, but when he got hurt early in camp, he was fighting through it. My belief is you’ve got to get healthy to give yourself the best chance. An old pro, he kept fighting through it and then to the point where he couldn’t any longer. I talked to him about just taking a deep breath understanding that there’s light at the end of the tunnel with another in-season PTO that we can talk about, but get yourself healthy first.

"It’s been hard for him. He hadn’t played in so long and then he gets hurt and his style of play is more presented to NHL games. The caliber of competition is good, but he wasn’t looking to impose his will on a junior kid. I think he showed areas that he can improve our team, and he’s got a massive reputation. That’s an important part of our game when you see what’s going on preseason. We want to continue down that path with him."

Montgomery said the initial groin strain was worse than everyone thought and Lucic tried playing through it while wanting to earn a contract.

"The injury was more significant than I guess he thought and we were aware," Montgomery said. "Credit to him for wanting to make the team and playing through that because he shouldn't have been playing. Now that being said, we'll wait until he gets healthy and we'll see how everything develops from there."

* Nick Bjugstad was held off the ice due to illness, according to Montgomery, who is anticipating the veteran to return to the ice Wednesday.

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