Good afternoon from rainy, chilly downtown Minny.

Went down to the St. Paul Hotel this morning for the media availability for Lester Patrick recipients Phil Housley, Brian Burke, Ted Lindsay and ex-Wild, ex-Mission/Itech owner Bob Naegele, Jr.

It could not have gone any more seamlessly from a reporter’s perspective, so thanks to USA Hockey and the NHL for running such an organized availability because I had to duck out early to cover Wild practice. Funny thing: Ran into Commissioner Gary Bettman on the way out. He said, “You know, there’s a luncheon Mike.”

I said, “Well, this might be the first time in NHL history a hockey writer turned down a free meal.”

Practice was calling.

Housley was terrific, and I’ll be focusing on the Stillwater High boys’ hockey coach mostly in tomorrow’s paper. Burke, as usual, was great, as was Lindsay, a true hockey patriarch. Last time I was so close to Lindsay, I believe, was the 1998 Stanley Cup Finals when Detroit took on Washington. At 83, Lindsay still looks great despite major back surgery recently.

Burke, by the way, is also Team USA’s GM for the 2010 Olympics. He said prior to tomorrow’s GM Meetings in Chicago, the staff (he, Atlanta GM Don Waddell, Philadelphia GM Paul Holmgren, Pittsburgh GM Ray Shero and Nashville GM David Poile) will meet for three hours to discuss the potential roster, etc. I’ll probably write more about this in my Sunday column.

After I write for tomorrow’s paper, I’ll come back on here and throw some snippets up from today’s interviews with the four honorees.

Naegele, who now lives pretty much full-time in Florida, and his family will be honored before tomorrow’s Wild-Sabres game.  The on-ice festivities will begin at 6:50 p.m.

Naegele and his family will be presented with a scrapbook filled with letters from fans, employees and friends (nothing from Reusse?) and the team will present the Naegele family with various other gifts and a highlight video.

In addition, the city of St. Paul will co-name a portion of West 7th Street to Naegele Way from Oct. 22 through Oct. 30.

“Only a week?” joked Naegele.

As for today’s practice, Pierre-Marc Bouchard and Marek Zidlicky again practiced, and should be good to go for tomorrow’s game as long as they wake up feeling good.

Zidlicky will likely play for Erik Reitz. Bouchard will likely play for, well, I won’t even venture to guess, although I have my suspicion. Gaborik and Nolan didn’t practice but skated on their own.

Marc-Andre Bergeron, who broke his nose during a preseason fight, took a Stephane Veilleux stick to the right eye in practice. He fell face-first to the ice, stayed there for a couple moments and then raced off the ice. He returned 15 minutes later with stitches next to the eye, and admitted after, he was mostly spooked by how close it came to the eye.

Veilleux joked that Bergeron will be wearing his “bird cage now.” Remember, Veilleux had to wear it last year after Veilleux’s nose turned a way it shouldn’t be facing following a puck to the nasal in Detroit.

Coach Jacques Lemaire did a little mea culpa after today’s practice about the comments he made to the two local newspapers following last weekend’s game in Tampa Bay regarding the “kids.”

He explained why he’s been so frustrated, but basically said after thinking about it all week, he realizes how difficult it is for Benoit Pouliot, especially, to have to play on the fourth line and then suddenly be expected to produce on the power play.

Lemaire also made sure to point out that James Sheppard’s minus-4 is completely undeserved when you watch why those goals were scored on tape. He did say of the Wild’s four centers — Koivu, Pouliot, Belanger and Sheppard — Sheppard fits best on the fourth line right now because of how good he is defensively and will have to play his second game in a row there tomorrow evening.

The Sabres are 5-0-1, have given up one power-play goal on 29 chances, have scored nine power-play goals and have drawn 37 power plays, so this is one fast, loaded team. They draw so many power plays because of how fast they are, so if the 4-0 Wild is going to dispatch the Sabres tomorrow, no doubt, the Wild will have to skate with them. If they don’t, they’ll take penalties and Buffalo’s proven to have a potent power play.

That’s it for now. I’ll come back later and throw some Lester Patrick Award honoree quotes up, and who knows, you never know what else crops up.

In other news, former Islander Mark Parrish has signed a tryout with the Islanders and will play for Bridgeport in the AHL. For more on this, see Greg Logan’s Newsday blog.

By the way, I used to deliver Newsday’s as a kid, so I’ve technically been in the newspaper business since about age 10.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 at 1:43 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.