If you want to be included in the Q&A, see the below post. 

Jacques Lemaire, without much prodding I may add, called out his “skilled players” after today’s practice, saying their scoring slumps have become an “emergency” as the Wild continue to be severely offensively challenged (two goals or fewer in 15 games).

He says they need to work harder to get out of these slumps and that there’s a difference in opinion in what they think “working hard” means and what the coaches think “working hard” means.

I asked for specific players. He said, lets put it this way (I’m paraphrasing), there are eight skilled players, including defensemen, in his opinion. When Brian Rolston and Mark Parrish are in slumps, he sees them working harder to get out of them.

So he’s clearly inferring that guys like Demitra, Bouchard, Belanger, Gaborik, Johnsson and probably Burns need to work harder.

I’ll have more in tomorrow’s paper, which incidentally, I better start writing.

In other news, Jacques reiterated that he wants to play Petteri Nummelin on this trip. He’s on injured reserve. It doesn’t sound like he’ll play tomorrow because no Wild player is on waivers today and nobody’s been traded.

So if nobody gets injured in tomorrow’s game and it’s true Nummelin will be activated, the Wild will have to make a roster move — either trade a player or put somebody on waivers with the intent of getting them to the minors. The clear candidate is winger Matt Foy, who’s been scratched 14 times this season.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 10th, 2007 at 7:23 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.