Happy Sunday, Russoville! Stensaas here, blogging from home after watching Jacques and Co. put the Wild through an hour-long practice at Parade Ice Garden in Minneapolis. Lots of Gaborik jerseys and other Wild paraphernalia cited among the few dozen or so spectators at this practice. Mostly hockey moms and dads and their kids. It’s quite a different scene from the empty Xcel Energy Center practices we’ve seen so far this season. At Parade, the stands seem to be on top of the ice. And all the little kiddies were right up on the glass trying to get a peek at their favorite players. Nice gesture by Andrew Brunette, by the way, turning back to slide a puck to a kid just before taking the ice. Two bucks will get you a puck at your local sports shop. But getting one from a player, that’s just cool. Especially when you’re seven.

Speaking of pucks, Jacques was demonstrating a passing drill early on and tried to chip the puck off the glass and into the neutral zone. Instead, the vulcanized rubber disc went sailing over and landed a few feet from me. Mr. Lemaire … was it something I wrote??

Lots of skating in this practice. A few dump and chase drills preceded a host of 1-on-1, 2-on-2 and 3-on-2 rush sessions. These weren’t quickies, either. The guys went toe-to-toe at full speed til the whistle blew. Pretty up-tempo for the day after a game. The coach said he wanted to see more of the team skating together, and he got it.

Owen Nolan had the play of the day, spinning around a defender during the 1-on-1 drills and beating Nik Backstrom five-hole. It drew a nice round of applause from the onlookers. Sharpshooter of the day award goes to Eric Belanger. Working on one-timer drills near the end of practice, he slapped one off the crossbar that careened back to Benoit Pouliot, striking the youngster right in the gut. He went down like he had gotten punched, but obviously it was all in fun.

On the news front, defender Marek Zidlicky is still not well enough to skate with that bum right ankle. He will not make the upcoming road trip, meaning he’ll miss at least the first four games of the season.

And Russo realizes he had a misprint in his Short Takes section from today’s paper. Vancouver’s player who honored the late Luc Bourdon with the bow-and-arrow gesture Thursday is Alex Burrows.

More from me tomorrow. The team will practice in the morning before taking off for Atlanta.

Now go watch some football.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 12th, 2008 at 2:02 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.