Hola, Bonjour, Shalom from the Buckeye State, where I was just walking back from the rink and watched a Sebring pull over, a guy hop out and urinate on the Nationwide Insurance World Headquarters.

Lovely. After watching Sicko, I assume he just got a denial in the mail or something. Apparently, he doesn’t buy the slogan, “Nationwide is On Your Side!” 

The morning skate started off with the “boys” singing Happy Birthday to Mark Parrish. He turns 31 today, the first of seven February Wild birthdays. Carney turns 38 Sunday, with the others being (not in order) Sean Hill, Marian Gaborik, Niklas Backstrom, Todd Fedoruk and Brian Rolston.

The Wild is going with the exact same lineup tonight, meaning Backstrom in net and Hill, Matt Foy and Petteri Nummelin out.

I just checked out one period of the USHL game between Columbus and Cedar Rapids with former Blue Jackets GM Doug MacLean. His son, Clark, plays for Columbus and is the Junior Jackets’ third-leading scorer. They were up 3-zip on the RoughRiders by the intermission.

Both junior teams got a chance to watch the Wild skate this morning, and it was pretty exciting in particular for four Minnesotans on Cedar Rapids — Blaine’s Ben Lynch, International Falls’ Brady Hjelle (committed to Minnesota-Duluth), Plymouth’s Kent Patterson (Avalanche draft pick) and Wayzata’s Tyler Thompson (committed to Mankato).

Also, guess what? I met the infamous “Nick in New York” and his wife last night. We just happened to be at the same restaurant and he came over to introduce himself. I plan to watch warmups with him tonight. Nice guy.

Adios, till later.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 2nd, 2008 at 1:34 pm 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.