Jacques Back in Jersey

Well I am back on here sooner than I thought I would be. The New Jersey Devils announced that Jacques Lemaire is the new coach. This will be the second time that he has coached the team. He is joining a team that has a lot of promise for a cup. Including Zach Parise, Brian Rolston, and according to Russo's prediction; Martin Skoula. If Lemaire was hired a week earlier I could have seen Veilluex joining the Devils. He will be joined by his longtime friend/teammate/assistant coach Mario Tremblay. Lemaire claims that his team will have more offense in his past teams, but we will see how long that lasts. Saw this one coming as soon as Sutter left the team.

Wild Summer

Throwing on a fresh post here for the first time in eh, almost three weeks. Got to keep this blog current, you know? Anyway, a lot has happened since I last blogged on here. Martin Havlat was signed which is great, considering Gaborik has been long gone. We picked up two solid defensemen and a couple prospective defensemen. Oh yea, we drafted a Minnesotan in the first round, in Nick Leddy! And the best news that I could ever ask for: Veilluex is no longer with the Wild! It was a great day in Minnesota when that was announced. Now we just need Punto off of the Twins. But, that is the same situation as the Wild had with Veilluex. Until Gardenhire is gone, Punto will be in a Twins uniform.

I thought the Wild had a solid draft this year. I like the initiative they took to acquire more picks in the middle rounds. All those picks were at the X yesterday for the Development Camp. I was quite impressed with the talent on the ice, it showed we had a promising future ahead of us. Colton Gillies was a man among boys out there. I thought Cretin graduate Chris Hickey was very solid, he handled the puck very well and had an all around solid scrimmage. One guy who had a horrible scrimmage was Petr Kalus. This clown did nothing but hold on to the puck and hold on and hold on and well you get the point. He held the puck for so long that at one point a guy in the crowd yelled, "pass the puck a$$ hole." He got a good laugh from everyone around him. All I seen out of Kalus was being selfish, favoring his right leg, and playing extremely dirty. Including somewhat of a clothesline at the end of the first half of the scrimmage. The Shattucks duo looked very good out there, as did both team's goaltenders. In the end it was Clutterbuck's white squad beating out Burns and his fedora's green squad, 7-4.

Well that is all I can muster to think of right now since I am at work. Hopefully, I will be able to add a new blog in the coming days. Thanks to Hockey Wilderness for the picture below. I saw it and said, "Hey that's me!" Click on the picture for a clearer vew.

Quick Wild Talk

There is less than 24 hours until the New York Islanders make the first selection of the 2009 NHL Entry Draft. Minnesota Wild fans are excited to see what the Wild will do tomorrow. With the talks of trades and the big question: who will the Wild choose? Russo states the Wild are tossing around all three Minnesotans and some other names. I am still hoping the Wild choose Gopher forward Jordan Schroeder. Russo also said that it looks like the Los Angeles Kings are the front runners for Dany Heatley. Which is disappointing to Wild fans, even though it was a long shot to aquire him. But, Chuck is surely still in many different trade talks and I am confident that he will make some sort of deal tomorrow.

I attended the Minnesota Wild Summer Bash today and took in the festivities in downtown St. Paul. I got a chance to ask James Sheppard a couple of questions. When asked about the draft tomorrow he said, "it will be exciting to see who we pick and who the other teams pick..with three Minnesota guys in there it will be interesting to see where they end up." I asked him about his draft day experience and he described it as follows: "a lot of my family was there with me and when they called my name it was awesome." I also asked him if the new style the Wild will play will be better for him than the Lemaire regime. "Yea it will definitely be different, and I am excited to see how it all works it out. Jacques did a great job of coaching us and this will be different from his style for sure." Thanks to James for taking the time to answer my questions.

I just wanted to jump on and throw that little bit in there. I will be on alert all day tomorrow for major news from the Wild or any big trades in the league. I will be blogging tomorrow after the draft tomorrow night. During the day I will try to tweet as often as possible when new news comes out. https://twitter.com/BetchaSports