Jacques Lemaire was downright giddy today. He basically performed a standup routine.

First of all, Marian Gaborik talked about his groin.

After I mentioned over lunch with colleague Jeff Shelman Monday that my life’s work apparently is to ask about Gaborik and his groin, Jeff decided to go into our archive system and write “Michael Russo and Marian Gaborik and groin.”

How many hits? 170, which I actually thought was low.

So I just performed the same search with Kent Youngblood’s byline inserted instead of mine. How many hits? 53. 

So 223 hits came up since I joined the Strib in Sept. 2005.

That’ll go to 224 tomorrow. 

Gaborik said his sore groin is feeling “much better” today and he hopes to practice tomorrow in Denver.

Lemaire said Pavol Demitra (groin) is not going on the trip. As I predicted yesterday, his injury sounds more serious. Officially, the Wild said he’ll miss at least another week.

“No Demo on the trip. He’s in the clinic, with one leg on one side, the other on the other side and there’s a guy rubbing him,” Lemaire said, hysterically laughing at the picture he painted. “He hasn’t moved from that table.”

Hey, as Jerry Seinfeld would say, not that there’s anything wrong with that. 

However, Lemaire said if at some point Demitra feels he can practice or play, the Wild will fly him in from the Twin Cities.

“If he one day wakes up and says, ‘Hey, I’m ready to go,’ take the plane, come and see us,” Lemaire said. “He’s going to get a schedule. He’ll know where we are.”

As for Petteri Nummelin, he’s gone from No. 7 D to second-line RW next to Mark Parrish and Mikko Koivu.

Still, usually Nummelin struggles against physical teams, but Lemaire said, laughing, “He’ll have to skate faster.”

I asked if that would change against physical defenseman Dion Phaneuf and the Calgary Flames on Tuesday, Lemaire said, laughing, “He’s going to skate really fast. He might get a pulled groin, but he’s going to skate. Oy, Yoy, Yoy.”

Lastly, on Wes Walz, and this is going to be the last time I mention the Walz situation for some time, I hope.

I was told by somebody close to Walz today that there won’t be an update for some time. After thinking a lot about that comment, this is how I feel and it’s pure speculation:

I think Walz, who’s very emotional, probably wanted to retire. I think the team has conveyed to him that there’s no reason to make an emotional decision and to take some time off here and then decide.

In other words, just like Scott Niedermayer, I think if Walz took a few weeks or a month or even two off, refreshed his body and more importantly mind, got that fire back and then wanted to return, the Wild would take him back in a heartbeat.

After all, Walz keeps himself in amazing shape. If anybody could take time off and come back and not miss a beat conditioning-wise, it’s Walz.

So we’ll see, but I don’t anticipate much news here for awhile, especially since my personal belief is I should respect his privacy — and trust me, I’ve reached out to him multiple times during the past week.

That’s it. Saturday’s blog update will be late. I have a morning flight to Denver, but the team doesn’t practice until 2:30 p.m. in Denver.�

This entry was posted on Friday, November 9th, 2007 at 1:17 pm and is filed under Practice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.