I’ll be on KFAN at 3:05 p.m. today and ESPN Radio 1050 in Nueve York during the second intermission tonight.

Excited about the Broadway Blueshirts being in town. It’s nice to dine with some old Eastern Conference beat writer and broadcaster pals and nice to cover a different Wild opponent for once.

It’s the Rangers’ first trip to Minny since 2003.

How is it possible that a team with Jaromir Jagr, Marty Straka, Brendan Shanahan, Chris Drury and Scott Gomez has scored 73 goals, an average of 2.21 a game, for the fewest goals per game in the NHL?

The Wild’s goals per game of 2.52 is ninth fewest.

Goals per game in the NHL, by the way, is minus the free goal teams are awarded for winning in shootouts.

So for instance, it might say Edmonton has scored 93 goals in the standings, but the Oil has really scored 83 (10 shootout wins). So the Oilers’ goals per game ranks 27th at 2.37, ahead of Anaheim, the Islanders and Rangers.

Wild will go with the same lineup tonight. Todd Fedoruk and Derek Boogaard are hurt, Petteri Nummelin’s also “hurt” and Kurtis Foster is the lone healthy scratch.

For the second time this season, Josh Harding’s starting his fourth game in a row. The first time, when Niklas Backstrom was hurt, Harding went 0-3-1 at the start of a six-week slide.

This time, he’s 3-0, having surrendered five goals in three games.

Rangers in the midst of an optional right now.

No Marcel Hossa, Marek Malik. Sean Avery will return Sunday at the soonest.

Blueshirts coach Tom Renney sounds like Jacques. Same system.
Gameplan is “Force them to defend, keep the third guy above the puck and then trap back hard.”

I’m in an empty press box, so I have nobody to make this comment to (I’m nuts, but not nutty enough to talk to myself yet), so I figured I’d say this to you.

I was just perusing Detroit’s itinerary. The Wings play in St. Louis tonight and fly here after the game. They have a scheduled day off tomorrow despite playing the Wild on Saturday.

It’s very rare for any NHL team not to practice the day before a game, let alone, to not even reserve ice on the road just in case they suddenly decide they want to practice.

But this is what happens when you’re as good as the Red Wings are.

They are just running away with the conference, so really, how much practice do they need? But a full day off in the heart of winter in Minnesota? I’m thinking if you’re a diehard Wings fan, you’ll find a bunch of them doing Christmas shopping at the Mall of America tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 20th, 2007 at 9:21 am and is filed under Pregame skate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.