(My Sportsbook) - The St. Louis Blues got some news over the weekend that they had been dreading. All-Star defenseman Chris Pronger, hampered for the past year and a half by a sore left wrist, has decided to undergo surgery to deal with the problem and could be lost for the season.

"If I waited much longer, who knows?" Pronger told the St. Louis Post- Dispatch. "I might not be able to come back at any point during the season. It was prudent to do it now."

This will be the third operation on the wrist for the 28-year-old Pronger, who was already expected to be sidelined until January. He said the injury first happened back in February 2001, when a clearing pass hit him, and he has not been the same since.

"I can't handle the puck the way I'd like," he added. "I couldn't shoot or pass as well, and if you looked at the tapes since then, you'd see a lot of passes going to the left because I wasn't applying the same pressure to the stick. I couldn't get my shot off fast enough and a lot of times, I let Al [MacInni] shoot, and teams pick that up that you're not shooting."

It will be the third operation on the former Hart Trophy winner's wrist since the injury. The first time Pronger had a plate, about four inches long and with six screws, placed in his left wrist. That plate is now causing pain and may have to be removed.

"I can't go past that point without getting shooting pain up my arm," Pronger continued. "It just hurts when I need to use it. Hopefully, this will do the trick and we'll get as close to 100 percent as possible."

The Blues will not give a time-table for their star defenseman's return for another three or four weeks, but his original targeted date of January will likely not be met.

Pronger dressed for 78 games last season and tallied seven goals and 40 assists.

The news of Pronger's surgery is about the only bad news in St. Louis, as the Blues have run off a three-game winning streak and a four-game unbeaten string that included a 5-3 victory over the Dallas Stars in a penalty-filled affair Saturday to conclude their season-opening five-game homestand (3-1-1).

St. Louis was 3-of-13 on the power play in that contest, while limiting the Stars to one goal on five chances with the extra skater. In the decisive third period, the Blues scored three times, including two power-play tallies, and were on the man-advantage seven times in the final 20 minutes.

"Great win," Blues coach Joel Quenneville said. "Very emotional game. A lot of excitement in the building. For a game five [of the season], it had a lot of emotion...I like how we're playing. As a group we're doing it with what we have."

WHO'S NEXT

The Blues try to push their unbeaten string to five when they kick off their first road trip of the season in Edmonton on Thursday, and wrap things up in Calgary on Saturday.