Marek Zidlicky makes his triumphant return to the Sommet Center tonight.

Zidlicky is coming off a one-assist, plus-3 evening against the Lightning.

He was funny this morning. I reminded him how the Predators traded him on the first day his two-year no-trade clause expired. He said, “Yeah, first chance they got to trade me, they did.”

Zidlicky was a good soldier for the Predators. He had a good career here, but his $3.5 million salary was too steep for the budget-conscious Predators, who’ve got the lowest payroll in the NHL. And Nashville needed to give extensions to younger guys like Shea Weber and Ryan Suter.

By the way, Trotz called Weber, who’s got 10 goals already, and Brent Burns the two best young defensemen in the game (and then he threw in the caveat, if Burns was playing defense).

Barry Trotz said Zidlicky was one of the quietest players he ever coached. He said when Zidlicky had his baby boy, it took two months for anybody to find out.

Trotz also called former Wild minor-leaguer Joel Ward one of the most consistent Nashville players. He said he had no expectations for Ward to make the team, but he had a great training camp and has followed it up with a solid start to the season.

Josh Harding is starting for the Wild tonight. He’ll have to battle some rust obviously.

He nearly started against Dallas, coach Jacques Lemaire said. Harding, who was supposed to challenge Backstrom for games, hasn’t gotten that chance because Backstrom has played so well. This is only Harding’s second start and third appearance.

Harding hasn’t won since Feb. 10. Harding lost six of his last seven starts last season.

Lemaire said there will be one change up front. Colton Gillies was skating hard, so it looked to me Craig Weller will get a try after being scratched eight in a row and 10 of the last 12. If the Wild is healthy, I’d think Derek Boogaard would sit for him. But there is a chance Weller could be an unidentified injury replacement.

That’s just conjecture, but the Wild had an optional this morning and lots of guys were in and out of the training room. One player having difficulty walking was Eric Belanger – once a Predator for a day, literally (he was traded from Carolina to Nashville to Atlanta in 24 hours). Belanger got hurt when he was clobbered by Vincent Lecavalier on that first-period PK shift last night.

He battled to get up, played his position and then labored to the bench after the puck was cleared. He said he was really upset when Radim Vrbata scored on the next group of penalty killers because maybe he could have gotten a whistle if he stayed down. Although, on a PK, very rarely will the refs blow the whistle on an injury unless it’s life and death, so Belanger can’t be faulted. That’d be a big risk. If Belanger doesn’t get up, maybe Tampa scores on essentially a 5-on-3.

I talked to Mikko Koivu about the bad situation he put his team in last night when he put the Wild down 5-on-3 by mouthing off to the refs. He said it was a long two minutes for him and he’s learned from it.

OK, that’s it for now. By the way, if you didn’t see Scott Nichol’s goal last night from the Nashville-Atlanta game, it’s worth a look. He shot so hard, the puck squeezed through the netting.

He joked to Trotz that it’s all that working out he did last summer.

Regarding that previous blog by Stensaas, that was a stressful email I got from Jiggs’ daughter. I was literally backing out of the gate at MSP when I got the email, so I just forwarded it to every Canadian journalist I knew to try to create some publicity. I got an email from Jiggs this morning that it worked.

His tour group is back at the hotel and the Canadian government is working to get them out of Thailand.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 29th, 2008 at 9:54 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.