FYI, Martin Skoula, sore leg, is skating and playing.

Aaron Voros says he’s playing, but Chris Simon thinks he’s playing, too. So I assume one is mistaken, unless Sheppard sits and he the Wild goes with three centers.

Jascques Lemaire is home sick, not that we’d know for sure if we had access to him today.

By the way, I asked Voros about what his comfort level would be about playing blue line and he rolled his eyes, and said no way.

That was just a practice thing, folks.

Ian Laperriere was here early and looked like he could barely move. I think he was hit by a Brian Rolston shot. Don’t know if he’s playing.

Assistant coach Mike Ramsey has been cleared to fly to Denver with the team. He hasn’t flown since eye surgery.

Sorry if there are typos.Writing from blackberry.

I was at the arena so late into the evening yesterday, when I was packing up, I looked up and realized the building was pitch black. I didn’t even notice. Press box lights were on dim and the arena was a black hole.

It was one of the coolest sights I’ve ever seen, and kind of powering to be the only person in a dark arena.

I don’t know why I said that, but it was just a cool sight.

Anybody watch the Sharks-Flames game? Miikka Kiprusoff did everything possible to keep the Flames in that game (San Jose won 2-0), especially when Calgary unraveled and took penalty after penalty in the second.

There was an extended 5-on-3 (two in a row), but Kiprusoff kept the Sharks off the board there. You should have seen Mike Keenan go off on referee Tim Peel between the second and thirds.

It was unbelievable he didn’t get an unsportsmanlike. I’ve been on the other end of one of those Iron Mike eruptions, and it’s not fun. The string of penalties came right after Keenan felt Owen Nolan was tripped by the blue line. No call, and Keenan was incensed.

But if you didn’t see the glove save Evgeni Nabokov made on Nolan later in the game, go to NHL.com and watch the highlights. I fell off the couch.

Big news coming out of Florida. Jacques Martin has been told to give up his coaching duties and asked if he wants to stay on as GM.

Joe Nieuwendyk, whom sources say was offered the GM job earlier this season but turned it down, resigned at mid-week. Martin hasn’t decided if he’ll stay on, but if he’s going to hire his coaching replacement and give him a contract longer than his, that’s a recipe for problems. 

I’ll be on FSN North tonight at the start of its pregame show around 7.

From Judd Zulgad:

It looks as if Avalance defenseman and former Gophers standout Jordan Leopold will be a healthy scratch for a second consecutive game. Avs coach Joel Quenneville said today that Leopold will skate in warm-ups but then added, “we like the way the [defense] played in the last game.” That means Leopold, coming off a second consecutive injury-filled season, is going to have to remain patient.

In the opening game, the Wild had five power plays and the Avs only had one. Asked about staying out of the penalty box, Quenneville said: “You look at the penalties at the end of the night. We shot one in the stands [Paul Stastny in the first period], so that was a tough one. A couple of them I don’t think they were from the nature of trying to be too physical. I think we want to be smart with the penalties we do take. I still think we want to make sure that we have a physical presence in our game but I think we’d expect to be on the power play hopefully more than once tonight.”

This entry was posted on Friday, April 11th, 2008 at 9:30 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.