Well, the Wild got itself the day completely off, meaning no practice but a very expensive rookie dinner in Niklas Backstrom’s future.

I guess that’s the talented 28-year-old’s reward for saving the Wild’s you know what tonight with a 29-save effort over a Phoenix team that must despise him by now (both his NHL shutouts are against the Not-So-Great One’s).

The Wild was not good atall, as Bryan Murray would say.

Inexplicably, the Wild wanted to carry the puck into the Coyotes zone every time up the ice, only to turn it over at the offensive blue line. They constantly fumbled with the puck in its own end. It was fairly ugly and left Jacques Lemaire steaming like the hot tub at my Tempe resort (ha, ha and ha).

OK, sorry about that one. I shouldn’t point out that you’re in sub-zero weather and Phoenix nearly hit 70 today. That would be wrong and very mean, and I’m not like that.

Marian Gaborik, the player a married couple slaughtered to me in a very long email last week, scored his 11th goal of the season on the road tonight. That’s two more than any other teammate has on the road all season, and he’s missed 34 games. Scoring on the road, typically means character and star power and a very important player, which the married couple doesn’t believe Gaborik possesses.

But I digress.

Other than that, not too many Wild players were too good tonight. The one I thought deserved mention was Pascal Dupuis, who probably drew the eyes of the half dozen scouts that were sitting about 20 feet to the left of me.

No secret the Wild would be willing to give him up. He had five shots tonight, was tremendous on the PK. I’d say, arguably, the Wild’s best skater.

That’s it from here. I do plan on answering those questions tomorrow from the chaise lounge next to the pool. Stay warm!

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This entry was posted on Saturday, February 3rd, 2007 at 7:33 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.