Wild F Antti Miettenen broke out of his scoring funk early in the 1st period today against the Blackhawks when he ended a scrum in front if the Wild net by shoveling the puck past Wild G Nicklas Backstrom to give the Hawks a 1-0 lead.

Sorry...I guess it's officially lower-body-gate 2008. At any rate, apparently Marian Gaborik is set to play in his 3rd game of the season Wed v. Calgary. From what I read in Russo and what I saw on KSTP's award-winning sports segment (read: sarcasm), he was skating in today's practice on a line with James Sheppard and Stephane Veillieux. Sheppard called it the powder blue line, because they were wearing light blue jerseys. He also said Gabby was Gabby, something about Stephane, and that he (Shepp that is) was moving his legs well. I am hoping for a tish more than that I gotta say, but it's a start.

At least for tomorrow, this gives us something to watch for, and thus a reason to watch. Wild need offense and whether or not this turns out to be the start of Gabby's farewell tour, hopefully he brings back a little swaggar to the team and the fan base.

In 2-plus weeks of Wild hockey since I last posted, this is all I have been motivated to write. I can not sit thru watching this team right now. What started as inconsistency has turned into gouge-my-eye-out games to sit thru. It has turned into DVRing and fast-forwarding thru games, to turning it on for about 5 minutes tonite and checking the score on the ticker later. I am very passionate about Wild hockey but I have been dissappointingly apathetic about the team over the last couple weeks. When people ask my my opinion about Gabby or the scoring or really anything about the team, I have to fight back a response of "Who cares."

So if by the off-chance anyone has noticed my lack of posts, forgive me. I'm just finding better things to do with my time, like watching my daughter do all sorts of cool baby things. If the Wild start doing things that keep my attention, the posts will likely return.

On a much more positive note, the University of Minnesota-Duluth Bulldog football team won the school's 1st-ever national championship yesterday, winning the D-II football title game. I found myself jumping up and down while watching this game...very rube-ish. Way to go Dogs!