Jacques Lemaire lambasted his team after tonight’s clunker as you can read in the game story.

I knew it was coming when I sat in my customary spot to his right in the first row. But we were waiting for the rest of the press corps, and I just looked at Lemaire and shook my head.

Lemaire said, “I’m glad I’m not the only one shaking my head from that. I’m glad to see somebody else shaking his head.”

Lemaire then lit into the boys. I tried to squeeze in every quote in the story.

The Wild just blew a big opportunity, which is typical for this team. Chance to move into fifth with four games in hand on Anaheim. Instead is tied for eighth in points and failed to amazingly win its third straight home game for the first time this season.

The Wild was just completely inefficient offensively. Even though it only registered four shots in the first, it was an exciting, fast, hard-hitting period. The Wild had lots of close calls, but it foreshadowed the rest of the game. The Wild swung and missed or bumped into each other or over-passed or missed the net.

On a 1:36 5-on-3, it registered one shot and for the final 10 seconds played with four skaters because of some confusion by the bench. Thirty seconds later, Kim Johnsson left the front of the net, which became a huge problem when J.P. Dumont spun away from Nick Schultz in the corner.

Jason Arnott made it 1-0. The Wild was rattled. The Predators were energized and the Wild lost its game. Then, 62 seconds into the third, Nik Backstrom gave up a swiss cheese goal, and that was all she wrote.

You can read the mess in the gamer, but Saturday’s practice at Parade should be a doozy.

Couple funny things:

– Here’s something I’ve never seen before. Referee Stephane Auger was nailed by a deflected Marc-Andre Bergeron blast in the chest in the first period. He must have been getting treatment by the Wild doctors during the intermission because the second started with just Mike Leggo.

Then, a minute into the period, with play going on in the Nashville end, Auger ran down the Wild’s runway and jumped onto the ice.

– Backstrom and Leggo were having an ongoing jawing match all night. Backstrom was upset Leggo was letting Nashville players swipe at him after he had the puck frozen. Backstrom was so mad once, he nearly took Jerred Smithson’s head off with his big glove.

– Nashville blocked 22 Wild shots. The Wild blocked eight Nashville shots.

– The Wild is now 1-7-1 in its past nine against teams that played the night before.

– The Wild has scored one even-strength goal in three games against Nashville this season.

– The Wild is 15-10-3 at home. It had 11 regulation home losses last year.

– Cal Clutterbuck was a minus-1, his first minus in the last 19 games.

Talk to you after Saturday’s practice.

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It’s been a long, excruciating 10 months for Kurtis Foster, but his road to recovery will take another monumental step Sunday in Chicago when he makes his season debut for the Houston Aeros against the Chicago Wolves.

Foster has been cleared to return. I have a call into him, although I’ll probably talk to him in the press box later.

Funny thing tonight on FSN, but between the benches, Mike Greenlay will be wearing a “Greenlay Cam” on top of his headset. Should be a funny thing, kind of like Al Franken on SNL when he’d wear the fake satellite on his head as he reported from the Gulf War.

Also, just to show you how many Finns were here wearing Koivu’s No. 9 jersey tonight, here’s a picture at center ice before the game. Obviously, it’s a fabulous picture from the press box. But that’s 30 guys wearing red No. 9 jerseys and Koivu in a suit in the middle. It’s so clear as day, folks. Focus.

You should have seen these folks rummaging the Hockey Lodge today. Lets put it this way: It was a good day for Wild revenue.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 6th, 2009 at 6:16 pm and is filed under Game coverage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.