Ladies and gentlemen, thank you NfromNY, my chair has been kicked and I am wide awake. The coffee helps, too.

Man, it is cold out. I was so chilly by the time I walked back to the arena, I nearly turned around and went back to Starbucks.

Just noticed that somebody just added John Buccigross’ Wild preview to the comment section of the last entry. I thought I added that last week, but I think it got lost in cyberspace.

As a bigtime Guster fan coincidentally enough, I loved it as well as I told Buccigross in an email last week. Dead-on. It’s also nice to have people at ESPN like Buccigross and Steve Levy that actually like and promote hockey.

OK, to the news of the day. Looks like Kurtis Foster (groin) is not playing tonight. He was last off with Matt Foy, typically meaning they’re scratched. I assume Jacques wants to give Kurtis a few more practices and not disrupt a 2-0 team.

Josh Harding was first off the ice, which usually means he’d start. But Nik Backstrom told me that he’s starting, so I’m assuming that we’ll see Backstrom again tonight.

As for Edmonton, Sam Gagner, the son of former North Star and FLORIDA PANTHER Dave Gagner (yes, I covered him and he’s a good dude), is scratched tonight.

Just an fyi, get ready to read a lot of Sheldon Souray quotes this season considering the Wild plays the Oil eight times. What a golden quote. I chatted with the sharp-shooting blue-liner who scored a league-record 19 PPG’s last season for awhile this morning, and he’s as well-spoken and charismatic an athlete as you’d ever meet.

He adds some personality to everything he says. No cliched stuff. No wonder my colleagues miss him in Montreal and my colleagues in Edmonton blather about him.

Dwayne Roloson was named an honorary (or honourary?)member of the St. Paul police Dept. last night during a ceremony.

Also, I wanted to make a point about the Boogaard debate on the previous blog. I was at every Edmonton game last season, and I don’t remember Reasoner, Smid or Hemsky being sent off by dirty hits. Reasoner was big-time clean, just devastating. And the Hemsky hit, I remember it clear as day from exactly where I’m sitting this very instant.

Boogaard turned to skate at a defenseman and in the slot in the Wild end, Hemsky turned into Boogaard and the two collided. It was a complete accident, at least from my perspective. No penalty was called or should have been called.

I’m not saying Boogaard doesn’t run around freely vs. Edmonton, but the injuries that transpired were not because of dirty Boogaard hits.

Lastly, not for this Sunday, but for my Sunday column next week, I plan to do a blog bag, aka, mail bag.

Friday or Saturday of this week, I will put up a link on Russo’s Rants asking for any questions you have. I will answer a few in my Sunday, Oct. 21, column.

So begin thinking of some good, original questions (wild or NHL related) and make sure to throw them in the comment section of the Q&A link that will be posted by this weekend. Understand that space is tight and to keep your questions as brief as possible.

Last year, I got a lot of great ones and if I have time, MAYBE I’ll answer some of the excess ones on a later blog entry.

OK, talk to you during tonight’s game.

OHHH, and I can’t believe I forgot this, James Sheppard will debut tonight.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 1:51 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.