Good day from Beantown, where Russo’s refreshed, although his ears are still ringing from a maniacal Canada fan rooting on his favorite team and nation last night.

Stephane Veilleux is sick. Derek Boogaard has an upper body injury that’s keeping him out of a second straight game tonight.

This means Benoit Pouliot is back in, and it sounds as if John Scott’s getting a second straight nod over Erik Reitz. As members of Russoville have dubbed, Reitz is chained inside “Chatteau de Bow Wow.” But Pouliot emerges — at least for one day.

Manny Fernandez is 13-2-1, 13-1-1 in his past 15 decisions and has won five straight entering his start against his former team last night. The guy’s playing awesome now that he’s healthy, but we couldn’t ask him anything this morning because Moody Manny struck again, showed how things haven’t changed (at least off the ice) and reminded me just how lucky I am to be covering Niklas Backstrom and Josh Harding (and reminded me how great it was to deal with guys like Dwayne Roloson and Roberto Luongo and Trevor Kidd and Chris Mason and Trevor Kidd and (even) Mike Vernon and on and on and on).

Fernandez, who’s got to be the Comeback Player of the Year if there was such a thing, wouldn’t talk this morning. In fact, the always-classy Tom Reid went over to say hi, and Fernandez not only wouldn’t look at him, he basically treated him with disdain. What’s Tom Reid ever done to the guy?

Then when the PR guy came over to play traffic cop, my colleague from across the river said, “Oh, come on Manny,” and Fernandez made some snide remark. I said, “Manny, it’s a positive story about how well you’re playing,” and he mumbled something about, “Yeah, positive stories for the last eight years.”

Oh, that Manny Fernandez. Always a pleasure. Maybe the Wild can sign him back if it loses Backstrom.

Manny did talk to my pal Bob Harwood from VERSUS though.

Talked with Blake Wheeler for awhile. Talk about a well-spoken kid, not to mention, solid player. Talked with Phil Kessel, too, who’s got 24 goals and should be an All-Star Game pick in a few days. The interview was just a bit bland, so that you might not be reading in tomorrow’s paper. His younger brother, Blake, plays up at New Hampshire, which is only about 90 minutes from here. So the Kessels are able to see each other pretty often, and in fact, got together yesterday.

Speaking of the All-Star Game, the West team will be announced tomorrow at noon, so we’ll know if Mikko Koivu and/or Backstrom will be heading to Montreal. Koivu’s on the team, I’ve got to think. If Backstrom doesn’t make it, it’s a crime.

Name me a West goalie that’s been better, especially since Columbus’ Steve Mason is probably a YoungStar. Evgeni Nabokov probably has the second goalie spot behind starter J-S Giguere.

Jacques Lemaire continues to say good things about Krys Kolanos, but Lemaire wants the good play to continue. Kolanos is a former Boston College star. In fact, I once watched Kolanos play in the Beanpot tourney (BC, BU, Harvard and Northeasten) in this very arena because the Panthers played the next night. In fact, I’ve got to look it up, but I think BC won the tourney that year (2000 or 2001).

Couple funny things:

– Canadian Nick Schultz made a fifth-place medal for assistant equipment manager Brent Proulx, who is back with the Wild after working with the U.S. team at world juniors. Proulx was taking a lot of jabs. One Canuck said, “Thank God you guys didn’t win because then we’d have to see another ‘Miracle’ movie. We’ll just be trying to win our sixth in a row next year.”

– P.R. guy Ryan Stanzel was mistaken last night by two kids as Owen Nolan. As somebody kidded, “That’s embarrassing for our team, and Nolan.”

– Speaking of Nolan, Jacques Lemaire called everybody over at the end of the skate for a quick huddle, but Nolan didn’t realize, and he left the ice. When Lemaire saw this, he just said, the heck with it, and sent everybody to the locker room. As one player said to a laughing Nolan, “What a wily veteran move.”

– The team may have whiplash. As players commented about how fast the bus driver was backing up in the TD Banknorth Garden this morning, the guy nailed a dumpster.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 11:32 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.