Wild didn’t practice today, instead arriving here in the Mile High City and going for an off-ice workout. Busy hotel, by the way — the Wild, the Mexican national futbol team and the U.S. Potato Board.

Marian Gaborik got off the bus, then got into a car with assistant trainer Travis Green and headed up to Vail to be examined by Marc Philippon, who just performed “Marian Gaborik surgery” on A-Rod.

Gaborik apparently asked coach Jacques Lemaire if he could skate with the team for the first time in Thursday’s morning skate. When my colleague told him that Gaborik said he didn’t know if he’d skate, Lemaire nearly blew a gasket, and said sarcastically, “I guess if he feels like skating tomorrow, if he wakes up and he feels like he can go and skate with us, he will. And if he wakes up and doesn’t feel that skating will be part of his day, he won’t.”

I did a big Bouchard piece tomorrow. He’s been playing much better, scoring clutch goals, but Lemaire continues to ride the 24-year-old “veteran” hard, saying he’s not satisfied. Interesting quotes from Lemaire in the story, whom I got after I talked to Bouchard. I wish it was vice versa.

Lemaire also talked a lot about James Sheppard, and how he needs to be better and he’s not “ready to produce.” He dropped him to the fourth line against San Jose and sat him in the third period because he felt Peter Olvecky was offering much more.

He also continued to praise 6-8 defenseman John Scott, whom he says keeps it simple, doesn’t try to do too much, makes great first passes out of the zone. With Brent Burns not here, it looks like Scott will continue to get the nod over Kurtis Foster.

OK, off to dinner.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 11th, 2009 at 6:38 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.