I think I’ve got that translated correctly, but if I don’t, I’m sure I’ll get bombarded with emails.

Benoit Pouliot has entered Jacques Lemaire’s doghouse. Tonight, when the Wild hosts the Carolina Hurricanes, Pouliot will be in the land of the press where Jacques Lemaire says he hopes he’ll “be watching the game carefully so he learns.”

Good afternoon from whatever side of the river Minneapolis in on.

If you didn’t sign up for the Star Tribune fan page on Facebook yet, here’s the link again.

Also, “Russo Radio” on KSTP will be tonight at 6 as opposed to Wednesday night. The show will also be next Tuesday as well, then back to it’s regularly scheduled programming for awhile.

Back to the original topic at hand, Mr. Pouliot, who has no goals in the last 17 games (since Nov. 15), will be scratched tonight. Want to know how much Lemaire wanted to send Pouliot a message through the media?

Lemaire told us Pouliot was a scratch.

At the end of our scrum today, Lemaire said, “Ben won’t be playing tonight, and Weller.” Not in the history of me covering the team has Lemaire volunteered the scratches. We usually have to watch the bag, and then follow up with him after the game or the next day as to why a particular player was sanctioned to expert’s row.

This time, Lemaire wanted to be asked about Pouliot, so I bit. “He needs to do the little things better and the big things better,” Lemaire quipped.

The only hammer coaches have nowadays is when to sit a player. With Krys Kolanos here, Lemaire’s been given an opportunity to send Pouliot a message. Pouliot’s become awfully complacent on the ice lately, and something tells me after the break, Pouliot will have a spark in his skates. After getting bagged by Mario Tremblay, Pouliot admitted that was motivation enough. He was pretty ticked off, which is a good thing, and he admitted he hasn’t played well at all the past few weeks, which is an even better thing.

Hey, admitting there’s a problem is the first road to recovery.

The Wild expected a lot from Pouliot this season, and he started out well with five goals early. But he’s not doing much at all lately. Lemaire again pointed out how talented Pouliot is, how he’s arguably as fast as Gaborik. But if he’s not displaying that in games, it’s all for naught.

More on this in tomorrow’s notebook.

I mentioned on yesterday’s blog that I talked to Hall of Famer Clark Gillies yesterday, which was a thrill for this ex-Islanders fan. The goal of the story was to talk to him about what he thought of young Colton scoring his first NHL goal, and winner at that, against his old team Friday.

Guess what? There’s a glaring error printed all over cyberspace. It was in the NHL Draft Guide. It’s in the Wild media guide. It’s on Wikipedia. It’s on pretty much any Web Site you find where you google Clark Gillies and Colton Gillies.

Colton Gillies is not the nephew of Clark Gillies and Clark Gillies is not the uncle of Colton Gillies.

They are blood related, but Clark says Colton is the son of his cousin’s son, which “I think would make him my third cousin?” Clark Gillies said. I’m no expert in this, but according to my calculations, that would make Colton at least a cousin twice removed.

This explains why they never met. I think where the mistake originally started was Colton’s always thought he was a “great uncle or second uncle.” He even said that after the game the other night. So once that got printed originally somewhere, it’s been repeated like folklore until it became fact — Clark Gillies is Colton Gillies’ uncle.

Regardless, Clark told me he’s been paying attention to Colton’s career from afar for years, even asking Saskatoon coach Lorne Molleken about him during Colton’s career in the double-U.

Clark was excited about Colton’s winner the other day, and gave me his email address for Colton because he wants to keep in touch and meet him when the Wild comes to New York in March.

Not much else going on.

On my daily shooting the breeze with Boogaard note, I was talked to Boogey today about his brother, Ryan, who is a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer and Boogaard’s press secretary (I know this because you’re reading this now I’m sure)

Derek was telling me how Ryan can work 16 hours a day, yet he’ll still go home and search for anything Derek Boogaard. Apparently, there was a Toronto Sun poll recently where they said Boogaard was the slowest skater in the NHL.

“Ryan was so angry,” Derek said. “Sometimes he gets so mad he chokes.”

Boogaard then goes, “Plus, I’m not the slowest skater in the league. I mean, I’d smoke Bruno in a race.”

(editor’s note: Even though I was shooting the breeze with him, he gave me permission to throw that on the blog).

By the way, for the first time tonight, Niklas Backstrom is wearing his new mask — the one I wrote about in the preseason with the eagle on one side and bear on the other. The first one wasn’t the right size.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008 at 1:13 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.