I wandered down to the Rec Center in St. Louis Park this morning for more of the Octagon camp, which runs through next week. Several NHLers — Keith Ballard, Ryan Malone and many others — have been skating for some time with Wild players Brent Burns, Derek Boogaard, Stephane Veilleux and Josh Harding.

But I found a couple more Wild players added to the fray.

James Sheppard. Andrew Brunette. Eric Belanger. And, guess who, but none other than Marian Gaborik!

Gaby lives, and speaks. Here’s the story in Wednesday’s editions. It was the first time Gaborik put out his voice regarding his ongoing contract extension talks with the Wild.

If you’re a Gaborik fan, the good news is there’s definitely been back and forth negotiations, which means Gaborik’s at least open to talking. But the bad news is Gaborik was noncommittal when it came to actually saying he’s going to sign long-term here.

Of course, he has to be to retain his leverage. This is after all a negotiation. But Gaborik also made clear to me that he knows his options. He knows that next summer there’s going to be “20 teams” that come after him if he becomes a free agent.

So negotiations are definitely “complicated,” according to assistant GM Tom Lynn. It’s not as simple as picking a salary out of the hat and number of years. When you’re talking about this type of term, you have to estimate how high the salary cap will get six, seven, eight years down the line, you have to try to determine what the market value for a top-10 player will be six, seven, eight years down the line. Remember, you can’t tear up a contract and renegotiate in the new NHL. And there are no performance bonuses in the new NHL.

So the Wild and Gaborik’s agent, Ron Salcer, are in the discovery stages. Whether this ends with Gaborik signing an extension is still to be determined. But right now, they are undoubtedly talking, but this could very well go into training camp, which will undoubtedly create some kind of subplot to camp. The one thing that was clear to me is Gaborik is going to get tired talking contract publicly.

As for Gaborik’s surgery to repair a torn labrum in his hip, Gaborik says he’s feeling very good and is just trying to “tune it up.” Gaborik hadn’t talked about the injury previously with the media, but Gaborik said it was a lingering problem throughout last season. And remember, he scored 42 goals and 83 points in 77 games.

He said it never got so bad where he felt he had to pull himself from the lineup in the second half, although “sometimes it was bothering me more than others.” He said it hurt at times during the playoffs, but he did not use it as an excuse for not scoring a goal against Colorado.

One other thing: I’m pretty sure I reported this after the Wild’s Game 6 loss, but right before Gaborik addressed the media, GM Doug Risebrough pulled Gaborik into a back room of the visitors’ locker room at the Pepsi Center. This summer, I learned from Risebrough that he told Gaborik to keep his head up and “whatever you do, don’t apologize for not scoring. You have nothing to apologize for because you worked your” you know what off.

I asked Gaborik about this, and he confirmed that was the nature of the conversation.

“Of course, I was disappointed after we lost. I had some bad bounces, but everybody left everything out there. Everybody put their heart and soul into it.”

By the way, four months after reconstructive knee surgery, Branko Radivojevic is already playing for his new Russian team, and scored a goal and an assist in his first game, according to Gaborik.

That’s it for now. More and more players will be arriving soon. I’m pretty sure Niklas Backstrom and Pierre-Marc Bouchard, among others, will be out at the Rec Center next week.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 10:19 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.