As much as I enjoyed Russo’s “Hanging around. Hanging around. Hanging around.” line from today’s game story, Wild coach Jacques Lemaire described the team’s current situation a different way today that made me smile.

“We have our nose out of the water,” Lemaire said, finger pressed firmly on the tip of his own nose. “And we’ve got weights on our head. And our feet are going. And hands.”

He then mentioned today’s heavy-on-instruction practice, which included just 13 skaters. Lemaire said all the wires are not connected to the main curcuit. Not exactly a ringing endorsement, eh?

One positive sign from today was that Mikko Koivu had a light skate on his own this morning. The team though had no real update, only saying Koivu is “progressing.”

Asked about his top center, Lemaire told us reporters:”He’s in the clinic. And you can’t go there.”

Thanks, coach.

Lemaire did say that Koivu told him he was “feeling better.” But with a knee injury, who knows what that means.

As for other injury updates, Lemaire said Brent Burns (concussion) told him he’s “had better days” and that Derek Boogaard (upper body soreness) “as big as he is, I haven’t seen him.”

UPDATE: An e-mail from a team spokesman little while ago said Boogaard is unlikely to join the team in Canada this weekend.

That’s about it from today. Lemaire promised a good, strong practice Friday. I’ll be there, and will be back on here after that.

Good day!

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 26th, 2009 at 1:08 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.