(blog updated after phone conversation with Kurtis Foster) 

You’re not going to believe this, but Wild coach Jacques Lemaire took another violent crash to the ice this morning when he collided with assistant coach Mario Tremblay as they both tried to avoid a deflected Colton Gillies clear.

Lemaire was nailed right in the back by the puck and hit the deck hard. He looked like he injured the right arm — the opposite arm that was hurt when he was accidentally hit from behind last week by Antti Miettinen.

Lemaire rolled on the ice in pain and took a few moments to get up, but he finally did and laughed it off when Tremblay started making jokes.

“I got the puck right on my back, so I went down … again,” Lemaire quipped with perfect comic timing.

“[Gillies] shot right off my back. That’s a smart way to get back at me. It’s OK. Still won’t play. He hit Mike [Ramsey] in the corner [earlier in practice]. He shot at me. He still won’t play,” said Lemaire, I think, kiddingly.

“They just found a name for him before the practice,” Lemaire continued. “They call him, ‘Crash.’ I said, ‘Take that away because he’s going to kill somebody.’”

Poor Gillies. The rook seemed a little spooked by the incident after practice. He said it deflected when Andrew Brunette stuck out his stick to attempt to deflect the clear.

The Wild had a bit of a unique practice this morning. They spent the first roughly 15-20 minutes practice 6-on-5’s with an extra attacker on instead of a goalie behind them. This had a lot do with the Ottawa game, especially when Lemaire pulled Josh Harding for an extra attacker. However, Ottawa quickly gained possession and Harding had to rush back to his cage.

“Well, we had possession when I called him. We lost the puck, so ‘get back, come back,’ — little bit like a horse,” said Lemaire.

Marc-Andre Bergeron missed practice with upper body soreness. Derek Boogaard missed practice with sickness. They’re both expected to be on the ice Tuesday. On Tuesday, half the guys will be in the gym, half the guys will be on the ice.

You can read the rest in Tuesday’s article.

By the way, defenseman Kurtis Foster played all three games this weekend for the Houston Aeros. He had four assists in the past two games. Yesterday, he was supposed to play just the power play, but John Scott was a little sick, so Foster said he played the whole game.

He said he’s feeling great: “A lot better than I thought I’d feel.” He said his shot feels incredible, and the two things he feels he needs to work on is “taking the rush a little better and in the D-zone, being a little more intense.”

The Aeros play Thursday and Saturday, and right now, he’s scheduled for a flight back to Minnesota on Sunday.

After losing three in a row, the Aeros have won four in a row since Foster’s arrived. Some Wild players were joking that maybe the Wild would put Foster on waivers after he returns to the Wild from his conditioning stint just to get him back to Houston since he’s clearly the difference down there.

I asked Foster if he’s started to wonder where he’s going to fit in when he returns to Minnesota.

He said, “It’s funny, I read what you wrote in your Sunday column, and I’d say you worded it exactly how I feel. With this kind of comeback from a major injury, I just want to help. I’m not going to be disappointed if I’m not playing right away. There are six D who have been playing all year and playing well. I just want to show them enough in practice that if somebody gets injured or they need me, they know I’m ready to go. This is a tough part of the year. We’re fighting for a playoff spot and these last 20 games are important points. I know I have to gain a lot of trust in Jacques in practice. So I’ll be quite all right if I have to work my way back as a depth player until hopefully I can work my way into the lineup fulltime.”

I was thinking, after I wrote my column the other day, another option for Lemaire at times is to dress 11 forwards and Foster as an extra seventh defenseman considering how quickly recently Lemaire’s cut his lines down to three anyway.

OK. That is it. Either Stensaas or myself will be on the blog after Tuesday’s practice.

Lastly, a reader sent me this, but here’s a nice blog last week from Washington Post’s Tarik El-Bashir on something he witness from Caps owner Ted Leonsis.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 3:06 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.