Photog Carlos Gonzalez and I walk into a local restaurant, Earls (a Canadian staple, in my opinion), tonight. As we’re waiting for a table, who comes running up to me from behind but Wild “Goalie of the Future” Josh Harding.

He was out with his family celebrating his new contract. We chatted for a few minutes, and I said to my colleague, “That’s why I cover hockey. What other athlete comes running up to the beat writer?”

Good dudes, those hockey players.

Speaking of which, Carlos and I attended Derek and Aaron Boogaard’s boxing training tonight at Lonsdale Boxing Club.

Let me tell you, I couldn’t imagine taking a punch from either.

The roughly two-hour training was intense. The entire 6,500 square-foot building literally shook as Derek treated a 250-pound punching bag like Todd Fedoruk’s, well, you know.

The two ended the session in the ring, and with mom, middle brother and sister looking on, proceeded to pound each other to oblivion. Pretty intense stuff.

It’s easy to see where Derek gets his good humor from. Boogaard is a go-to quote in the Wild locker room because of his personality and quips, and mom, Joanne, was the same way in her story telling.

So was Ryan, who besides being an aspiring Canadian Mountie, is also Derek’s PR guy. Ryan, 23, is the Internet savvy one who finds every single thing that’s written about Derek daily worldwide and makes sure to fwd it to him. He’s also been known to make guest appearances in the commentary section of this blog and pre-scouts several of the league’s enforcers for Derek.

Ryan told some hysterical stories which should appear in the paper.

Krysten, at 6-foot-5, is a star basketball player. She’s headed to University of Kansas in the fall and will soon travel to Slovakia for world under-19s.

“Gaborik better stay away from her,” Derek cracked, although he probably wasn’t kidding.

For all those asking for T-shirts, Ryan said if you email Trevor Lakness at laktose93@hotmail.com, you can purchase them from him. Good night.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 12th, 2007 at 2:43 am 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.