Good afternoon back in the Cities. Phoenix didn’t skate this morning after playing last night in Dallas.

Wild has a little fire in its bellies heading into tonight’s game against Phoenix. A win would set a Wild record for consecutive victories against an opponent (10).

Wild had an optional skate this morning. Every player participated, which says a lot. Niklas Backstrom — 8-0 lifetime against the Coyoats as they like to be pronounced –lost his mind at one point in the skate, slamming his stick into the glass behind him, then spiking a water bottle alongside the bench.

I cautiously tip-toed over to him and nervously asked, “Mr. Fernandez — uh, I mean Backstrom –what the heck happened?”

The Wild was doing a 3-on-1 drill, which isn’t fun for any goalie. He got upset because instead of shooting the puck on net and driving for rebounds, the forwards were making that last-second goal mouth pass for backdoor tap-ins. He found himself cheating for the pass, which he didn’t think was a good thing on the morning of a game. He basically felt it shouldn’t be a game-day skate drill.

He was well-cooled down when I was talking to him, so I didn’t feel it necessary to duck for cover.

Also, I got some funny stuff from Mikko Koivu, who is a bit of a buzz-saw in practice. With a naughty smile on his face, Koivu loves to go after guys in practice. He’ll cross-check them to the ice, slash them in the wrists, hit them from behind, stick his stick under their visors. It’s just Mikko being Mikko — competitive even in practice. But he does it kiddingly. Really funny quotes between Koivu and Nick Schultz.

Here’s a taste: “Schultzie’s an easy target. I love the way he gets rattled when I smoke him into the boards.”

Marian Gaborik had his hardest skate since his return. He came off the ice after even Colton Gillies and Craig Weller. Gaborik’s face and neck were as red as Cozmo Kramer when he used butter to sun-tan and fell asleep on the roof of his apartment building (that Seinfeld episode was on last night and fresh in my mind).

Jacques Lemaire said he knows there will come a time when Gaborik will walk into his office and exclaim, “I’m ready.” That’s when he’ll play. Gaborik said it’s coming, but he’s definitely not there yet. And with, as he described “the awkward start times” in L.A. and Anaheim, he doubts it’ll come on this trip even with a practice tomorrow in California.

In other words, because of the 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. starts Pacific Time, there will be no game-day skates, so it wouldn’t be very bright of Gaborik to return without any semblance of a warmup.

Lemaire wouldn’t say whom the scratch would be tonight — Gillies or Weller. I think it’ll be Gillies playing. He played well in this building last time Minnesota was here, and Lemaire said he’s very happy with Gillies’ practices lately. That would be a shame for Weller. If he’s scratched, it’ll be the third straight game he hasn’t played against his former team.

That’s it for now. I’ll be on KFAN in 15 minutes and Hockey Night in Canada radio on SIRIUS tonight at 5 CT.

A look ahead to the rest of the week. I’ve got a good Koivu feature in the works (not sure of a run date yet, possibly Saturday) and I just sat down with Doug Risebrough for a Sunday column on the uncertain economics of the game (and the world, for the matter).

Risebrough said there were lots of Wild fans on his flight out here this morning.

Talk to you again before the game.

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 11th, 2008 at 2:06 pm 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.