Pavol Demitra and Pierre-Marc Bouchard are out tonight.

Demitra has a sore leg, maybe stemming from the Robyn Regehr hit. He did skate this morning. The team is saying day-to-day, but aren’t we all?

Bouchard is out with the flu and tried to give it a go in warmups.

Eric Belanger is back in for Demitra. Mark Parrish is in for scratched Chris Simon. Matt Foy is in for Bouchard. And Aaron Voros is out of sight, out of mind.

Postgame notes: Ugly, ugly game for the Wild. The score was not indicative of how bad the Wild was.

Edmonton skated through the Wild’s trap like they weren’t there. They had more time and space in the Wild zone than any team I remember all year. The Wild took inadvertent icings. The Wild took a too many men penalty on a power play. Just awful, and you can see it right from the first shift when Mikko Koivu and Kim Johnsson combined for three turnovers in Minnesota’s end on one shift.

Jacques Lemaire said the optionals are over. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say Lemaire was waiting for this.

I don’t want to use the word revolt, but if you read between the lines of my optional practice story when we were in San Jose — what seems like a month ago — Lemaire was not happy at all when vets came to him a few weeks ago and asked him to back off and let them be pro’s and decide when they’d go on and when they wouldn’t. But he relented and let them do their own thing. Since, things have been upbeat.

But Lemaire pointed out sarcastically, “We have a team that everyone has to take care of their own preparation before every game.”

The Wild was dominated in every area of the game tonight, and Lemaire said he’s the coach and will go back to coaching practices — everyday, mandatory practices.

There were just some ludicrous plays tonight, and it did look very much like the team was not prepared to play a fast, desperate team like the Oilers, who are fighting for their lives.

The most unbelievable one again was Martin Skoula. There were so many culpable figures tonight, it seems unfair to point this out. But I have to, it was so ridiculous. He turns the puck over in the neutral zone and then sprints to the bench as Edmonton flew in on the rush. Andrew Cogliano scored the first of his two goals.

But at least Skoula didn’t get a minus on the play. Because he wasn’t ON THE ICE!

But like I said, lots of players were overwhelmed. Brent Burns and Keith Carney really struggled.

The Wild should feel fortunate that Calgary lost. Now they’ve got a one point lead on Calgary and three on Vancouver and Colorado. But Calgary has a game in hand on them, and Vancouver two.

And what are the chances of this? Nik Backstrom has been yanked in his last three starts in Edmonton.

The first time, he was pulled with a 3-2 lead, Josh Harding didn’t give up a goal and Backstrom wound up with a win.

The second time, he was pulled after giving up two goals. But the Wild scored twice, so Harding got the loss.

Tonight, Backstrom gave up the first three, but Harding gave up the last two. And since the Wild scored three, Harding gave up the winner and thus got the loss.

So Backstrom is still 8-0 against the Oilers going into Wednesday’s rematch.

Of course, nothing much Backstrom could do on the first three goals and Harding did cough up the puck to Wild killer Kyle Brodziak for the fourth goal and winner.

Nothing else. It probably says something when the Wild goal scorers are Nick Schultz, Sean Hill and Todd Fedoruk.

That’s it for now. Finally, I’m flying home in the morning.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 6:57 pm and is filed under Game coverage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.