Where am I? I don’t know. I woke up this morning, looked around my dark hotel room and had no clue whatsoever.

I feel like I’ve been on the road a month.

As for tonight’s game, the Wild hopes to win Game No. 1 of this six-game trip tonight inside the most difficult building in the league to win in. New Sharks Travis Moen and Kent Huskins won’t debut tonight. Moen’s wife just had a baby; Huskins has a foot injury. Evgeni Nabokov tweaked something, so the Wild faces “backup” Brian Boucher. I say “backup” in quotes because Boucher’s a mere 10-3-2 with a 1.96 GAA and .925 SP.

For the Wild, coach Jacques Lemaire asked defenseman Kurtis Foster yesterday if he wanted to play tonight. But Foster was honest and told him he’d rather wait until L.A. or Anaheim. Remember, the last time Foster was in HP Pavilion, he walked into the arena in a suit and left the arena on a stretcher.

It was followed by a 12-hour surgery and more than a week in a San Jose hospital because of a broken leg. Foster knows he’s going to have to face nerves in his first game, but he was a little worried he’d be haunted by this arena.

So he’ll wait, and Lemaire said he will play this weekend most certainly. Foster talked a lot this morning about the incident, the irony that Torrey Mitchell, the player who caused his broken leg, is still out with his own broken leg and how classy the Sharks’ organization was during his time in San Jose. Sharks GM Doug Wilson and the team’s president, Greg Jamison, treated him royally.

They brought him goodies in the hospital, they set him up with an IT guy so Foster could watch all the Wild games on a laptop, and Wilson’s secretary Rosemary Tebaldi constantly drove Foster’s now-wife to and from the hospital and brought them food. Now you know why the Sharks are considered one of the league’s great organizations. 

A big part of my notebook for tomorrow’s paper will have Foster talking about his future also. I talked to him extensively the other day about it. He’s a free agent July 1, and his future right now is uncertain.

Andrew Brunette, who will be taking a lot of practices off down the stretch because of his knee injury, skated this morning and will play. Brent Burns and Kim Johnsson didn’t skate this morning. Lemaire said, “They’ll be OK,” and will play tonight.

I made you wait long enough, but you’re not going to believe this. What do you know, but apparently there was a misunderstanding between Lemaire and the front office regarding Marian Gaborik.

In today’s paper, from yesterday, Lemaire said, “Something tells me that he might be skating with us when we get back, so that would be a positive.” Asked if “something” tells him that or “someone,” Lemaire said, “Someone.”

So today, Lemaire was asked by a San Jose TV station when he expects Gaborik back.

Lemaire said, “You have to ask another member of the organization. I made a comment yesterday and I guess it was the wrong comment.”

I emailed assistant GM Tom Lynn asking what this meant because Lemaire wasn’t pleased, and Lynn said he thinks Lemaire heard from one of them that Gaborik would not practice until after the road trip and he took that to mean right after the road trip rather than at least until after the road trip. So Lynn said Gaborik will skate with the team after Tuesday, but the specific date is undetermined.

Got it?

Here’s a funny one. So the Wild’s “Robert the Intern” is out here in San Jose because this is where he’s from. This morning, I was watching the skate with Lemaire and “Robert the Intern” asks me, “How’s the road trip so far?”

The smart $%# I am, I said, “I don’t know. Jacques, how’s the road trip so far?”

Lemaire looked at “Robert the Intern,” and says, “You don’t read the papers?”

I then said, “Well, don’t believe everything you read,” and Lemaire goes, “Yeah, don’t believe everything you read, but when they write the score, you can believe that.”

Sorry to put you on the spot, “Robert the Intern.”

By the way, forgot to mention yesterday, the Dallas Stars practiced right before the Wild, so old pal Mark Parrish got a chance to say hi to his old teammates, as did Antti Miettinen with the former North Stars.

Lastly, Lemaire confirmed to me today for the first time that the hard shell he’s wearing on his arm is to protect a broken elbow from the Miettinen mishap last month.

Talk to you tonight.�

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 at 4:16 pm 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.