Good evening Wild fans. Just remembered I should probably jump on and blog before I go back to work on some stories for later in the week.

Day One of the on-ice portion of the Wild’s training camp is complete. Twenty-five hundred fans showed up despite it being the first NFL Sunday. Monday’s 11 a.m. scrimmage is also free and open to the public, so if you don’t have school or work, see you there hopefully.

As is often the case on the first day of camp, it was a pretty sloppy scrimmage at times as players shook off the offseason rust. Very high pace though, especially after Petr Kalus woke everybody up, and this pace is higher than usual around these parts just because of the system Todd Richards is introducing.

While you couldn’t tell by the amount of goals scored today (three), the new system was very evident. He worked on two facets of the game during practice and video session before today’s scrimmage — entries and forecheck.

There were three things that I picked up on that is different than past, and I hope this doesn’t bore you:

1) Entries will be with speed right up the middle lane. As Richards says, middle-lane entries are not optional. The goal is to back the defensemen up and force them to the inside, which hopefully opens things up on the outside.

2) Not to get too Hockey 101 on ya, but, I will. It used to drive me nuts when I heard all critics whine about Jacques Lemaire’s trap. To me, it was just a bunch of people who really didn’t understand what they were watching throwing out the old trap cliche whenever they weren’t entertained by the Wild. Every team traps, folks, and this version of the Wild will trap, too.

What I think probably caused all the “dull” critics to come out of the woodwork was the thing that used to agitate me the most about Lemaire’s system — not the trap, but the forecheck. Often times, the Wild would really only fly one forechecker into the zone. That forechecker would go at the defenseman with the puck, and when that defenseman passed it to his partner, that same forechecker would peel off and skate at the other defenseman. If the pass was on the money, the opposing team usually had an easy outlet out of the zone if the Wild winger wasn’t aggressive.

It looks to me, and it was confirmed by a bunch of players and sort of Richards himself, the Wild will now send two forecheckers in the zone. One forechecker will go at the D with the puck, and if that D passes it away, that forechecker will finish his check and the other forechecker will go at the new puck carrier. This should create more pressure in the offensive zone. I will say, judging from what I saw today, while the Wild will try to be a more puck possession team, a big part of this system is to dump and chase — a good dump to an area where the goalie can’t play it and the defenseman will be pressured so the Wild can come hard with its forwards. And, if the first or second forechecker is a center, he can go hard where in the past he usually wasn’t permitted to go in on the forecheck. I know some fans don’t like dump and chase systems, but usually that’s because the team that’s dumping isn’t chasing and the puck comes out. If the Wild dumps and goes in hard like the system insists, the system should work. But, and this is big, the players must skate!

3) Lastly, and this has been well-reported, the defensemen are constantly joining the attack as a fourth forward essentially. Obviously, if the defenseman goes, a forward must still cover up, or to say the least, Niklas Backstrom and Josh Harding won’t be happy campers.

Now, remember, this was just what a lowly sportswriter picked up on. I’m sure there are several other intracies, AND, he only worked on two parts of the game. He barely got going on breakouts, the neutral zone, special teams, etc., etc. On Monday, he’ll work on the neutral zone to build on what he taught today, but then go right back into the forecheck and entries heading into Tuesday’s first exhibition game in St. Louis (I can’t believe I’ve already got a flight to hop on).

As for the first parts of experimentation in camp, Marty Havlat (I hope you bought today’s paper to read the feature I wrote on him, but if not, it’ll be online Wednesday) skated with Mikko Koivu and Andrew Brunette. Koivu scored one goal after Havlat forced a turnover, then set him up. And Havlat scored the winner soon after Colton Gillies’ nice tying goal.

Pierre-Marc Bouchard played center, and Richards said it’ll be a “work in progress.” In other words, it’s an adjustment. Richards did make it extremely clear that he wasn’t happy with some of the guys fighting for spots and ice time, and they better show a sense of urgency starting Monday.

Nick Schultz had a great line today. He’s got 88 career points in 527 games, but he was up ice attacking every shift. I asked him if people should draft him in their fantasy leagues and he said, “I wouldn’t go that far.”

Schultz and Petr Kalus got into it three times this morning. Kalus, who quit Houston last year after not making the Wild, is trying to be seen by the fresh eyes of management and coaches. He threw his body around a lot this morning, and twice hammered Schultz. Schultz didn’t like it, and late, finally got his revenge on Kalus with a big check, and then a couple jabs to the head.

Schultz was much calmer after and said to give the guy credit for trying to make the team. Hey, this is how Aaron Voros got noticed a few years ago by Jacques Lemaire. He clocked Keith Carney and almost started World War III.

I said that to Kalus, and he got offended, saying, “I think I’m a different player than Voros.”

Kalus, now tattooed up and down his right arm, got a bit of an edge to him, ha. I asked him if he planned to report to Houston if he doesn’t make the Wild this camp. He paused, then said, “Probably, yeah.”

OK, must start working on some other items. That player feature I teased yesterday, the plan is to run it Tuesday. Obviously that can change if something big happens at Monday’s practice. Talk to you later.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 13th, 2009 at 8:09 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.