If the Wild was getting complacent because of one lucky win over Nashville, a game in which it was mostly outplayed but got great goaltending from Niklas Backstrom, Jacques Lemaire tried to wake up his happy-go-lucky team during Tuesday’s long, hard-working practice.

Lemaire sent all sorts of messages to the team, both on the ice during one long meeting with several (mostly) veterans, and through the media after.

Yesterday, Jacques apparently tried to send a message (I wasn’t there but was told about it today) by having hard-working youngsters James Sheppard, Matt Foy and Aaron Voros leave the ice well before the veterans, who stayed long after to work.

Well, the message didn’t get across because Lemaire was POed with the same (mostly) veterans today.

I’m writing on a different subject for tomorrow, so here’s parts of Lemaire’s post-practice gathering with the media:

On Pavol Demitra’s expected return Wednesday against Phoenix: “I don’t know if they think because Pav is getting back that everything will be fine. That won’t be the case. Pav’s OK. The other guys aren’t.”

Not happy with practice? “It was not a good practice. It’s hard to know what’s coming. Lately, it’s hard to know what’s coming (alluding to the fact that lately when the team’s practiced well, they’ve still played poorly, so maybe practicing poorly means they’ll play well?). 

“Now, we’ve been bad for two practices, so I don’t know. It’s hard to get a gauge, to figure them out when they’ll be at their best and when they won’t be. Myself, I don’t like it. You practice well, you should play well.”

What don’t you like? “Concentration and focus on what you’re trying to do. If they take [practice] lightly or what, I don’t know.

“I told them, I said, ‘At this time of year, we had four days, one day off, two days worth of practice. Today should have been 35 minutes on the ice. We spent an hour.’ You get a day off, you should be excited to come back and do well.

“[I] could leave it like this, keep going, say ‘everything’s fine, everything’s fine.’ And it’ll end up we won’t be able to win a game. You’ll never get a team. A team is 20 guys that work. That’s a team.”

Did he like anything about practice? “What I liked, Butch (P-M Bouchard) in the last five minutes of practice. He was jumping. He was good, man.”

Lemaire only liked “all my workers,” but he made clear he’s talking about guys like Voros and Foy and Sheppard because he said, “[Stephane] Veilleux was average. He lost a little life. Maybe he thinks he’s a finesse player.”

A lot of this is trying to light a fire under this struggling, up-and-mostly-down team, especially with a critical four-game homestand coming up. Lemaire knows the Wild better get its points at home with a very difficult five-game road trip on the horizon.

As for practice news, Demitra will play. And unfortunately if you’re a Wild fan, he will play center, probably with Mark Parrish on the left, and definitely Marian Gaborik on the right.

As we know, Demitra likes playing center in this system as much as Brian Rolston does.

The only difference? Rolston doesn’t cheat offensively, so he barely is effective at center. Demitra will cheat, so he should still get points at center. As we know, Rolston’s dried up a lot and he’s (1) very happy to be back at left wing and (2) very happy to have Demitra back. Rolston knows a Demitra-Gaborik line will command tons of attention from the opposition, which should free him up more offensively so he can break out of his nine-game slump.

Josh Harding or Kurtis Foster — probably Harding — will likely go on injured reserve so Demitra can be activated.

Kurtis Foster, incidentally, sustained a gruesome injury with that slapshot to the face in Nashville. He broke his cheekbone, can’t open his right eye. It honestly is the worst black eye I’ve ever seen. The broken bone is also right where the helmet touches. So he won’t be able to play until the swelling goes down and until he’s able to handle the helmet pressing on the injury.

Still, Foster skated today with one eye before practice and hopes to practice Thursday. I’d be shocked though. He’ll have to wear a full cage for a couple weeks after he returns, and hopefully this convinces him to put on a visor for the rest of his career.

By the way, all injured guys except Demitra are out — Foster, Nummelin (head), Harding (head), Koivu (leg) and Boogaard (back).

Lastly, the Wild has an online auction for the team’s green jerseys from last season on www.wild.com and www.nhl.com. Proceeds will benefit the Minnesota Sports & Entertainment Community Giving Fund and Special Olympics Minnesota.

The auction features 25 authentic Wild game-worn jerseys from December and January of last season. Eighteen are autographed on the fight straps. The auction ends Dec. 22.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 at 2:26 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.