Just wanted to check in because I’m leaving for vacation tomorrow and probably won’t be updating the Blog too often.

Couple little notes in recent days that have been in the paper that didn’t make the Wild page:

– Assistant GM Tom Lynn left for Toronto Tuesday morning (July 17) to prepare for potential arbitration cases for defenseman Kurtis Foster, left wing Derek Boogaard and defenseman Nick Schultz. Foster’s is scheduled for Friday, Boogaard’s for July 23 and Schultz for July 26. The Wild will continue to try to work out deals to avoid arbitration, but hey, you’ve got to be there in case.

If arbitration hearings are actually held, the Wild can choose for Foster to be awarded a one- or two-year deal (I assume one since the Wild came close to just letting him go June 26 and would want that flexibility next June). UPDATE: FOSTER RE-SIGNED AT ONE YEAR, $1.025 MILLION.

Boogaard can choose whether he’d be awarded a one- or two-year deal since the Wild opted to take him to arbitration. As for Schultz, the Wild can only choose a one-year award because teams are not allowed to choose two if it means taking away a player’s unrestricted free agency.

After seeing guys like Cory Sarich (Schultz’s brother in law) and Scott Hannan get big free-agent contracts, Schultz’s agent, understandably, is looking for the Wild to ante up bigtime in order to buy out his free agency. So it’ll be interesting how this plays out. If he only gets a one-year deal, could the Wild even shop him before the season? Remember, after signing Sean Hill, Risebrough said he’d be willing to trade a defenseman.

Still, depending on what you could get, I think trading Schultz is a risky move. The guy is steady with a capital S. How many times in a season after a goal against do you say, “Man, what the heck was Nick Schultz thinking?” It’s a rarity. There’s a few Wild defensemen where you can say that a few times a week.

– The Wild re-signed minor-leaguers Matt Foy, Joel Ward, Erik Reitz and Aaron Voros yesterday. All took their one-year qualifying offers. All are on two-way deals. All require waivers to be sent to the minors. All will likely start in the minors, although Foy’s got a chance to start depending on injuries, etc.

– As a Boogaard postscript, I found it fascinating that on 1A Sunday were kids fighting and on 1C were kids shooting guns. That’s a newspaper for the ages, eh? I don’t know what was more disturbing, but coming from a person who’s never fired a gun, I’ll go with the latter. 

Of course, now I’m sure critics nationwide will take their swipes at Boogaard with the same old tired argument that this is why nobody watches hockey. Nevertheless, for the sake of accuracy, I did want to make clear that of the money the camp took in, Boogaard’s not getting paid. Puckmasters, which puts on the camp, is seeing that money.

There were certainly some characters in Boogaard’s camp. The most memorable was a teenager who drove hours to get to camp. He seemed to rebel the minute he got there because he arrived in Regina early and decided to get himself a nipple ring.

I don’t know about you, but if I were ever to get a nipple ring (I don’t even like shots, so don’t worry mom), I wouldn’t do so seconds before I was about to take blows to the chest. This kid was bleeding through his shirt before he even took the ice!

He showed up with his 13-year-old brother, who planned to DRIVE the two home after so his older brother could sleep. So I’ve got to tell you, Saskatchewan has bigger problems than children fighting.

How about children driving?

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 17th, 2007 at 10:23 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.