It will be announced at 3 p.m. that Craig Leipold is officially the new owner of the Wild. Of the many other investors, Phil Falcone, 46, of Chisholm, will be the general partner.

Leipold owns 51 percent of the team. It’s believed Falcone owns upwards of 40 percent of the team.

While Leipold says it’s not true Falcone has an option to become majority owner in five years, Leipold said it wouldn’t shock him if at some time in Falcone’s life he is the majority owner of the Wild.

Leipold said it’s a huge priority to keep Doug Risebrough, who could be a candidate for the Toronto job this summer.

Things just got a whole lot worse for the Wild as it was revealed defenseman Martin Skoula has a “sore leg.” He’s considered possible for tomorrow.

First of all, if Skoula doesn’t play and you don’t think that makes things a whole lot worse, you’re letting your dislike for Skoula blind you to reality.

It’s not known the severity of Skoula’s injury. Injuries are usually understated in the playoffs, and I don’t think they’d even tell us about Skoula unless there’s something serious going on. Take Mark Parrish, who is day-to-day with a head injury, according to the team.

We all know he has a concussion. We all know he’s not playing tomorrow.

If Skoula’s out, the Wild is in bigtime trouble. It’s that simple. If the defensemen for the rest of the series are Kim Johnsson, Brent Burns, Petteri Nummelin, Keith Carney, Sean Hill and Erik Reitz, who was officially recalled on an emergency basis today (doesn’t count toward one of the four callups), the Wild is in bigtime trouble.

Because, I don’t think Johnsson and Burns can play 60 minutes.

Last night’s game is prime example of why injuries to Kurtis Foster and Nick Schultz are so devastating.

Johnsson had to play 32-plus minutes. Burns had to play over 30. Skoula had to play almost 27. And Jacques has little confidence in Hill, proof by his ice time being less than Derek Boogaard’s 8:56.

Look at the 4-on-4 goal. Think Carney would have been out there? Skoula played a great regulation, but look at him in overtime. Two turnovers in his own zone, and then he couldn’t move on Sakic’s winner.

Fourteen guys practiced today, and they were led by the assistants. Of the heavy-hitters, only Brent Burns, Mikko Koivu and P-M Bouchard practiced.

Obviously, the Wild essentially called tomorrow’s Game 2 a “must-win.” You can’t go into Denver down 2-zip.

A lot of guys have to be better. I thought Pierre-Marc Bouchard played the type of game that gives the Wild skepticism that he’s a guy you can build around at a huge ticket.

He didn’t go into the trenches, I remember the one shift where he cuts between the circles and didn’t even consider shooting and instead passed to Mikko Koivu at a bad angle. And Koivu couldn’t get a shot off.

Pavol Demitra did not play well, and he got his wish of playing mostly wing. Marian Gaborik had one shot.

The Wild isn’t going to win if Gaborik gets one shot.

Brian Rolston played a strong game, slamming people on the forecheck, etc. He said it’s time for others to leave their “comfort level.”

Still, the Wild claim its confident and positive heading into tomorrow. It’ll be interesting to see how they play.

They played well enough to win and didn’t, so how does that affect their psyche? And Colorado knows they played poor enough to lose, and didn’t. And they’re slew of experienced players are saying they know they have to play better because they got away with one.

We’ll see how it goes. Heading down to Colorado’s room now.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 2:11 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.