Russo here, back in wintry Minny, where my eyelids are starting to get heavy. Not much sleep last night before my flight.

It’s funny. I took off in Calgary and felt like I landed in Calgary. Same exact weather.

Tomorrow night at 6 o’clock, U.S. vs. Canada in the world junior tournament. That will be an incredible game. I might have to beg the Wild P.R. firm of Sickman & Stanzel to put one of the two TV’s on top of my head in the X press box onto that game.

Brian Stensaas trekked out to Parade today for Wild practice, but it was scrapped. So despite the 5 p.m. game tomorrow, the Wild will have a 9 a.m. morning skate — 90 minutes earlier than normal.

The Wild says Marian Gaborik will take part in tomorrow’s morning skate and decide after if he’ll play against San Jose. The Wild did not yet have an update on defenseman Kim Johnsson, who returned to the Cities from Calgary yesterday because of a family emergency. Owen Nolan may skate with the squad in the morning, but he’s not ready to play obviously.

Wild has already had its worst month in team history essentially. It’s never lost nine regulation games in a month. Currently, the Wild is tied with two other months for the fewest points in a month (7). But because tomorrow is the Wild’s 14th game in December, if it loses in regulation, it’ll theoretically be the worst month in team history.

Semantics aside, no matter how you label it, it’s been a dreadful December for the Wild. I wrote a pretty hard-hitting column for tomorrow’s paper on the state of the franchise.

Not much else. I’ll be on KFAN at 3:35 p.m. and KSTP at 6 p.m. I’ll be at the X tonight at 8 for Minnetonka hockey.

For your perusing pleasure, here’s some All-Star tabulations as voting continues for the starters to the Jan. 25 game in Montreal (voting continues on NHL.com thru Friday):

West      

Forwards
Player                              Team        Votes
1. Patrick Kane            Chicago           774,062
2. Jonathan Toews          Chicago           674,583
3. Ryan Getzlaf            Anaheim     607,189
4. Marian Hossa            Detroit           385,106
5. Jarome Iginla           Calgary           383,917

10. Mikko Koivu       Minnesota   167,708

18. Marian Gaborik          Minnesota   74,353

Defensemen

1. Brian Campbell          Chicago           655,222
2. Scott Niedermayer Anaheim     532,702
3. Nicklas     Lidstrom    Detroit           526,555
4. Chris Pronger           Anaheim     523,113
5. Dion Phaneuf            Calgary           453,335

11. Brent Burns       Minnesota   99,395

Goalies
1. Jean-Sebastien Giguere  Anaheim     511,750
2. Roberto     Luongo            Vancouver   438,841
3. Evgeni      Nabokov     San Jose    394,245
4. Chris Osgood            Detroit           188,700
5. Niklas Backstrom  Minnesota   128,547

East

Forwards

1. Sidney Crosby                Pittsburgh        1,385,888
2. Evgeni Malkin                Pittsburgh        1,266,197
3. Alexei Kovalev                Montreal        1,015,622
4. Saku Koivu                Montreal        1,000,802
5. Alex Tanguay                Montreal        988,944

Defensemen
1. Andrei Markov                Montreal        1,099,139
2. x-Sergei Gonchar        Pittsburgh        1,046,592
3. Mike Komisarek                Montreal        1,027,970
4. x-Ryan Whitney                Pittsburgh        1,005,723
5. Zdeno Chara                Boston                442,493

Goalies
1. Marc-Andre Fleury        Pittsburgh        1,144,018
2. Carey Price                Montreal        1,105,655
3. Henrik Lundqvist                NY Rangers        150,914
4. Ryan Miller                Buffalo                138,096
5. Martin Biron                Philadelphia        102,601

x- means they haven’t played enough games to qualify for the All-Star Game. For some reason, Gaborik doesn’t have an x by his name. I would think six would be too little.

Talk to you on New Year’s Eve morning.

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