Welcome to my favorite day of the year. I’m back to work.

I’m not complaining about all the vacation I get in this business (I’ve got it lucky), but come August, I begin to get stir crazy.

Today was the first day of the 12th NHL training camp that I’ll be covering (would be 13 if the owners didn’t put the darn padlocks up a few years ago; trust me I tried to break into the National Car Rental Center-turned-Office Depot Center-turned whatever bank now pays for the arena that holds the Florida Panthers).

When I left the X yesterday afternoon, there were two fans already camped outside Xcel as they anxiously await single-game tickets to go on sale Saturday morning.

This morning, there were like 30-40 tents outside the arena. Pretty impressive since my temperature reading inside my car this morning spit out 46 degrees.

“I love it,” said veteran defenseman Sean Hill, who didn’t see fans line up for tix outside Nassau Coliseum and that beautiful Sunrise, Fla., arena the last two years. In fact, Florida leads the league in comp tickets. The Wild are handing out hot dogs tonight and pastries tomorrow to those who line up.

The scrimmage this morning ended in a 5-4 shootout victory for the green team, Team Honesty, I believe. For the white team, Team Passion, Serge Payer, Stephane Veilleux, Roman Voloshenko and Pavol Demitra scored. For the Team Honesty, Dominic Moore popped in two, Branko Radivojevic one and Danny Irmen the other.

In the shootout, Irmen and Adrian Foster (no relation to the Wild’s cannon-shooting blue-liner, Kurtis) scored goals for Team Honesty. Team Passion was shut out. Incidentally, for the record, Marian “0-for-8 In the Shootout” Gaborik tried a Demitra-like wide entry into the zone but still missed in the shootout. I don’t think you have to worry about Gabby though. Pretty good player, that Gaborik, and the Wild has plenty of shootout shooters.

The four “principles” of the Wild are honesty, passion, preparation and team, hence, the names of the teams. In case you’re wondering, there is no Team Team. Because that would be just plain dumb-sounding.

Jacques Lemaire wasn’t happy with the tempo in the first 25 minutes of the scrimmage but was delighted with the second 25 minutes (two running 25 minute periods).

I know it’s way early, but after watching Danny Irmen during the informal skates and again today, this guy should compete for a roster spot. Not only is he always in the middle of the rough stuff, he’s got wheels and hands and a lot of things the Wild miss from its third- and fourth-liners. Irmen’s a very good player, and one of the few who by all accounts had a quality year last season at Houston.

Team Preparation, which included guys like Brian Rolston, Eric Belanger, P-M Bouchard, Wes Walz, Nick Schultz, Kim Johnsson, Josh Harding, practiced after the scrimmage with Lemaire on the ice. Lemaire was happy afterward, and incidentally, Benoit Pouliot scored a few magnificent goals during that practice. One insane-looking one made Houston coach Kevin Constantine yell, “Who was that?” If Pouliot proves himself in camp, maybe Constantine will never get to see him. Maybe.

That’s it for me. I better get cranking on my two articles for tomorrow’s paper, or the editors will get antsy.

Talk to you tomorrow.

P.S. I LOVE the comments from the previous post. Russoville, Russo cronies, Russotan (which fits because my Italian blood always means I’m tan even in the heart of a Minnesota/Edmonton/Calgary winter), I need to get myself an agent.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 14th, 2007 at 3:04 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.