Nothing wrong with a little self-promotion, eh? I’ll join Matt Thomas tonight for the first time from 6-6:30 p.m. CT on KSTP, 1500-AM.

I’ll be on every Wednesday night. There are some conflicts where days will change, but I’ll broadcast that on here when that occurs.

As the old saying goes, the “lower body” is a long way from the heart. Defenseman Brent Burns will play tonight vs. the Stars, according to coach Jacques Lemaire, and Burns’ smiling, toothless face.

Not much going on. The funniest thing in the locker room today was Marian Gaborik trying to hide from me. He kept on peeking in a hallway to see if I was still in there. So I just stood there and stood there just for effect.

Niklas Backstrom appears to be the starter, and whether he goes again tomorrow night at home vs. Montreal will have a lot to do with the outcome of tonight’s game and possibly his workload. Looked to me that Colton Gillies will be joining me in the press box, but I can’t be certain because I was roaming the locker room when the bag skate was going on.

The Dallas media was focused with the Antti Miettinen start to the season, and the Dallas Morning News and Fort Worth Telegram peppered Lemaire and Miettinen with questions.

As for moi, I wrote a big Mikko/Saku Koivu for tomorrow’s paper. I recommend you check it out tomorrow. I think it’s a good read. I got some great stuff a few weeks ago in Tampa from potential future Hall of Famer, Mark Recchi, who used to be Saku’s roommate in Montreal. He drew some great comparisons and said there’s no doubt the Wild is “Mikko’s team.”

He also told a cute story about meeting Mikko when he was 12 years old: “He’s got his dad’s size today, I’ll tell you that.”

I wasn’t able to squeeze this into the story, but Mikko said he can’t believe Recchi even remembers meeting him. He said Recchi signed a stick for him, and it’s still one of his prized possessions to this day.

Here’s a weird thing: Montreal’s getting to Minnesota in a few hours, so the Canadiens will be waiting for the Wild essentially. Mikko and Saku’s parents, Jukka and Tuire, are in the Twin Cities for the game, so Saku will get to have dinner with his folks tonight in Minnesota and Mikko won’t be able to.

Speaking of Mikko, from the NHL: Minnesota’s Mikko Koivu leads the league with 12 assists in seven games this season. No NHL player has more assists in his team’s first seven games of a season since Wayne Gretzky had 13 for the Kings’ in 1993-94. Since then, four players besides Koivu had a dozen assists through their team’s first seven games: Adam Oates (1995-96 Bruins), Jaromir Jagr (1998-99 Penguins), Mario Lemieux (2002-03) and Peter Forsberg (2005-06 Flyers).

Pretty good company, eh?

Incidentally, Koivu took a nasty spill practice. Took a while for him to get up. He said he was OK after: “Stick to the skates from Burnzie. Surprise, surprise,” Koivu said, kiddingly.

Burns apologized umpteen times in the skate.

Also, the Wild will face rookie goalie Tobias Stephan tonight. It will be his second career start, fourth career appearance and first start of the year. He is 0-0-1 in his career, but he was apparently outstanding in last year’s start vs. Chicago.

Talk to you on the radio, and pregame on here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 29th, 2008 at 11:27 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.