Just a few random babbles on a Wild off day…

Mark Parrish
Former Wild F, St Cloud State alum, and Bloomington Jefferson grad Mark Parrish signed a minor-league contract with the New York Islanders. I was really excited when we signed Parrish and I liked him while he was here. He was good with the media, one of the players on the team that was easy to identify with because he loved to talk. But, he never scored goals the way the Wild expected him to because he’s an in front of the net guy. It’s hard to score when you’re getting beat up every game. So the Wild cut ties, and now he is trying to work himself back into the big show.

Bret Hedican
SCSU alum, St Paul native, and Kristi Yamaguchi husband signed a 1-year deal with the Anaheim Ducks. He’s 38 years old; I’m not sure how much he’ll play, but I’m glad he’s getting to put in another year.

Demitra Injured
Former Wild underachiever Pavol Demitra is out 3-4 weeks for the Canucks with a “torso” injury. Sounds like it’s a rib injury.

Dubay Fired
Following up on my Glorified Jots from a couple days ago, Jeff Dubay was fired by KFAN today as a result of his cocaine charges. You certainly can not blame the FAN for making that decision. I wish Puffy the best and hope he can straighten things out for himself and his health most importantly. Meantime KFAN will need to replace him on the PA and Dubay show. I’m cool with Justin Gaard or Corey Cove.

UMD Bulldogs
As I write this I’m having my very own UMD Bulldog Hockey Night, watching the Dogs v. Alaska Anchorage Seawolves thanks to goseawolves.com. The Dogs are down 4-2 at the start of the 3rd period right now. I just have to say, the UAA internet video feed looks pretty darned good. I’ve seen alot of ugly looking games streaming over the ‘net because Minnesota-Duluth games are not on TV here in the Twin Cities unless they’re playing the Gophers. But this game looks quite good, especially when you factor in that it is free, and most other games you have to pay $7. I hope they’ve improved the video over at B2Networks for the games at the DECC this season.

Oooh, make it 4-3 Seawolves with 17 minutes to go. UMD just scored a pretty powerplay goal.

And now it’s a tie game, another powerplay goal for UMD. 10 minutes to go. Oh bugger…looks like they’re going to review the goal. And…it’s no goal. Bunk. They didn’t gave a reason on the broadcast why they waived it off, and they didn’t show a replay. That sucks. 4-3 final, Anchorage defeats Duluth. Apparently there was a man in the crease on the waived-off goal.

Enough babble for one nite…

I’ve been meaning to put up a random post for about 5 days now. Long layoff for the Wild gives me a chance to muse about things I normally wouldn’t write about. But alas, Wild play tomorrow, so here is said post.

Wild v. Lightning
I had no game recap for Saturday’s game v. Tampa Bay. We went to a  nice Oktoberfest party and I didn’t get to see any of the Wild’s 1st game v. Barry Melrose and Wes Walz. Apparently I didn’t miss much. The final was 1-0 Wild in a shootout, with Antti Miettinen scoring the SO winner.

Special Feature Coming Soon
I have family in the Dallas area, and my cousin Matt is a big Stars fan. We’re going to work on a new feature for this blog for the 4 Wild/Stars games this season. The Wild are in Dallas next Wed Oct 29th and Matt is planning to go to the game, so look for my recap as well as a recap guest post from him. We’ll try a couple other things throughout the season as well for the games v. the team that I believe should be our biggest rival. If they would just realign the divisions…

Gabby
Alot has been written in the mainstream media over the last few days about Marian Gaborik. Mostly the steam is that he is on the trading block because it does not seem that the team will be able to sign him. There are basically 2 sides to the Wild faithful on this issue…1 that says good riddance because he is an overpriced injury-prone prima donna…the 2nd that says we need Gabby in a Wild sweater to be successful.

I, like most under the Libra zodiac sign, tend to waffle. I see both sides to the argument and on any given day I might think if Gabby is gone we won’t score enough goals and we’ll miss the playoffs for the next 3 years. The next day I’ll be hatin’ on Gaborik and looking forward to the day the soap opera is over. But regardless of how I feel, Wild fans better get used to the idea of a Wild team without it’s superstar for the 1st time since it’s inception.

NHL.com
If you haven’t yet, head over to NHL.com and check it out. I have been very impressed with its redesign. The feature stories are interesting. In-game stats are elaborate on NHL Gamecenter. They do a great job of highlighting the game and its players. You can watch the highlights of every goal over the last 3 years, and the NHL Network Online application collects the best features from each team’s website. NHL.com is one thing I think the league is doing right in the marketing department.

KFAN’s Jeff Dubay
I’m not going to get into any speculation or anything here, but I did want to send out positive vibes to Jeff Dubay of KFAN’s PA and Dubay show. I have listened to PA and Dubay for probably around 7 or 8 years and I was disappointed to hear about the recent charges against Puff. I’m not going to pretend that I know what he is going through, but I do hope he pulls through OK and we can get back to hearing him on the FAN talkin’ hockey, Twins, and everything else Minnesota sports.

Tampa Bay Rays
Am I the only one rooting against the Rays in the World Series? The Twins should be the only under-achieving team winning in a bad stadium. FYI, they’re down 1-0 to the Phillies as of right…about…now.

Next on the Docket – Wild v. Sabres – Thurs Oct 23rd
Sabres are 5-0-1, Wild are 4-0. Something’s got to give…unless it goes to overtime. Should be a pretty fast-paced game. I’ll go with the Wild, 4-3.