Colton Gillies, 19, has been told he will make his NHL debut tonight against the Boston Bruins. The likely scratch is Derek Boogaard, and like I wrote earlier in camp, if the Wild is healthy this season and it’s facing an opponent with few fighters, I think you better get used to this.

Boogaard wouldn’t divulge if he was told he’s not playing, but he did skate longer than his teammates with scratched defenseman Tomas Mojzis and backup goalie Josh Harding.

Gillies was on top of the world happy, but the butterflies were obviously circling.

He’ll play on the left side of Benoit Pouliot and Craig Weller.

Manny Fernandez getting the nod. He took shots from the defensemen, which is the general rule on the Wild when determining who is starting, and Tim Thomas is getting bagged.

I told you about this earlier in camp, but Jacques wanted more of a team feel in the locker room. So bordering the ceiling of the locker room now are actions shots of cool Wild moments in history.

FYI, remember, I-94 is closed both directions between 35W and 280, so depending on where you live, you may need to seek an alternate route to and from the X tonight.

If you’re watching from home, I’ll be on the Fox Sports Net North pregame show at 6:30 p.m. Hopefully they airbrush

I’ll also be on Rosen’s Sports Sunday tomorrow at 10:30 pm on CBS.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 11th, 2008 at 11:48 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.