Greetings everyone! The Wild returned to the ice this morning after having the past two days off for Christmas. Coach Jacques Lemaire, who earlier this week expressed his frustration over not being able to hold practice Dec. 24 or 25 said after today’s practice he was pleased with the way the guys came back. However, he is not optimistic about Saturday morning’s practice.

“I think tomorrow will be worse,” Lemaire said after putting a “not bad” label on today’s session. “Usually, that’s how it goes.”

More on this in tomorrow’s paper.

As for news, Lemaire said Owen Nolan skated on his own today. Nolan left the Dec. 5 game against Vancouver with a leg injury and has not been back since. He will resume practicing with the team after Wednesday’s game against San Jose, meaning Nolan will not be back before the New Year.

Also, it is officially known Marian Gaborik will sit the next two games. Lemaire, though, said today, “Or three.” We’ll keep an eye on this one.

Nothing too interesting happened today on the ice. Not surprisingly, Nolan, Gaborik, Kurtis Foster and Marc-Andre Bergeron were missing. Everyone else was accounted for. All told, I actually saw everyone but Nolan.

During drills, any play that the coaching staff deemed a penalty resulted in a penalty shot. I’ve seent this a few other times during practices. Today, it happened a handful of times, and so far as I could tell no one converted. Then again, most of the drills were being conducted inside the blue line. Gotta love that hash mark-to-crease window of opportunity.

That’s about all. Still another full day off before the Wild again plays: Sunday at home against the young and talented Blackhawks. It’s a 5pm start in case you forgot.

Hope everyone had a happy holiday! Back tomorrow with another update.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 26th, 2008 at 2:46 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.