Blake Wheeler stoked for outdoor hockey

The Boston Bruins are playing a game outside at some baseball field in Boston called Fenway park. It has a really weird tall wall in left field, which is really making Blake Wheeler look forward to that game in three weeks.

"When it was a blizzard outside, I thought about it," Wheeler said. "It's going to be a lot of fun. It's going to be a great experience to be field level at Fenway, first and foremost. Then, to be able to skate around and say you played a game in Fenway will be an experience of a lifetime. All of us played hockey outdoors (as kids) and I think we're all excited to have the opportunity to play before 40,000 at Fenway Park."

Read the entire article on NHL.COM HERE

Erik Johnson leads slumping St. Louis Blues in points

The Blues are struggling to score and according to STLToday.com columnist Jeff Gordon only Bloomington native Erik Johnson is producing to his capability.

Gordon somewhat calls out T.J. Oshie's lack of production as well as David Backes. Backes had 31 goals last year and is on pace four about 12 this year. Oshie has four goals and nine assists, but as a Blues fan favorite more is expected of the 22-year old.

Johnson has four goals and 15 assists and leads the team with 19 points.

Read Column HERE

Kessel returns to Boston Part 2

Last week Toronto and Phil Kessel played at Boston and were dominated 7-2 and Kessel wasn't very good going a -3 and not scoring. The Boston Herald has an article about the rematch with a quote from Kessel's old Gophers linemate Blake Wheeler quoted. Quote is below with link to article....

“He wants to play well every game, and especially that game he really wanted to play well,” Wheeler said. “But I think over six games (this season) we’re going to see Phil going at his best. And he’s a pretty dangerous player when he’s doing that.

“I think our focus was never on one guy or anything. It was on their whole team. But if he’s going to play his game, then that’s fine. We’re going to have slow him down and I think we have the guys that are capable of doing that."

Read Full Article HERE

Dustin Byfuglien scores amazing OT goal

Former Roseau Ram Dustin Byfuglien is known for his banging bodies and burying goals from close range not for highlight reel end-to-end goals. Last night the power forward scored his first ever overtime game-winner against the New York Rangers in a 2-1 Chicago win.

Here is the story from NHL.com. Check out the goal HERE

Byfuglien's OT goal lifts Hawks win over Rangers

Thursday, 12.10.2009 / 2:15 AM

John Kreiser - NHL.com Columnist

THREE STAR SELECTIONS

VIDEO ›

1st Dustin Byfuglien
Right Wing - CHI
GOALS: 1 | PTS: 1
ASST: 0 | SOG: 4
+/-: 1

VIDEO ›

2nd Henrik Lundqvist
Goalie - NYR
SAVE PCTG: 0.951

VIDEO ›

3rd Jonathan Toews
Center - CHI
GOALS: 1 | PTS: 1
ASST: 0 | SOG: 3
+/-: 0

Dustin Byfuglien wasn't going to let a dominating performance by the Chicago Blackhawks go to waste.

Byfuglien went coast-to-coast before tucking the puck past Henrik Lundqvist 3:43 into overtime, giving the Hawks a 2-1 victory over the New York Rangers on Wednesday night.

Chris Higgins gave the Rangers the lead by beating Cristobal Huet at 12:10 of the opening period. Lundqvist made the lead stand up until Jonathan Toews jammed home a power-play goal off a scramble with 5:55 remaining in regulation.

Byfuglien then won it when he picked up the puck after Duncan Keith blocked Vaclav Prospal's shot, raced down the left side, beat defenseman Matt Gilroy and slid the puck through Lundqvist's legs for the winner.

"We might as well take the two points instead of one," Byfuglien said after scoring on Chicago's 41st shot of the night.

The Rangers, who've lost five of their lasts six, managed just 18 shots and spent most of the night watching the Hawks race around their zone firing pucks at Lundqvist.

"We liked the way we played all game," Hawks coach Joel Quenneville said. "We had a lot of zone time and we did some good things and finally got rewarded. He played a heck of a game in net for them.

"I thought from start to finish, this was the kind of game we were hoping to play. We didn't have a lot of production to show for it, but that's the kind of thing that leads to scoring goals."

The Rangers were outshot 16-5 in the opening period and 7-1 in the third. Lundqvist spent the night fending off wave after wave of red shirts, much to the consternation of his coach.

"They had the puck the whole night," Rangers coach John Tortorella said. "When we had opportunities to keep a puck, we didn't do it. We weren't strong enough to take it away from them. They were in our blue (crease) all night long."

Lundqvist was about the only Ranger who got any praise from his coach.

"He was about the only one who played," Tortorella said of his goaltender. "Offense isn't my concern tonight. My concern tonight is a level of competing which was void as far as I'm concerned. If guys thought they were trying tonight, they're in for a rude awakening."

Higgins put the Rangers ahead when he took a perfect cross-ice pass from Marian Gaborik and ripped a shot from just above the left dot that caught the far corner past Huet.

Lundqvist made 30 saves through two periods before the Rangers started a procession to the penalty box in the third. They killed off two Chicago power plays but were unable to make it through the third -- Toews jammed the puck high into the net after a scramble that saw Lundqvist make two saves before the Chicago captain was able to tie the game.

"I thought we stuck with it," Quenneville said. "We didn't try to do too many fancy things in the offensive zone."

Byfuglien then won it with his spectacular OT goal.

"That's the best team we've played all year long, so you have to give them some credit," Tortorella said after his team, now 14-14-2, lost for the second game in a row. "I haven't
Been upset with the effort the last couple of games -- I think we played well. We stunk tonight, and we still got a point."

Material from wire services and broadcast media was used in this report.

Apple Valley native has big night for Ducks

What a night for Apple Valley native Dan Sexton. Playing in only his third NHL goal he lit the lamp twice late in the game to erase a 3-1 deficit against Dallas. Pasted below is the game story from the AP, or at least most of it with the parts concerning Sexton.

Sexton had nine shots on goal on the night in 15:06 of ice time. He also got a penalty early in the game for interfering with the Dallas goalie. Sexton was called up when Teemu Selanne was injured last week.

Sexton was playing with Bakersfield of the ECHL where he led the team with 13 goals and 13 assists in only 18 games. Read an article on his call up from that team HERE

Pasted below is an article from NHL.com on last night's heroic game from Sexton....

John Kreiser - NHL.com Columnist

THREE STAR SELECTIONS

VIDEO ›

1st Dan Sexton
Right Wing - ANA
GOALS: 2 | PTS: 2
ASST: 0 | SOG: 9
+/-: 2

Dan Sexton's dream was the Dallas Stars' nightmare.

Sexton, a 22-year-old rookie playing his third NHL game, scored twice in the third period before Saku Koivu goal with 46.5 seconds left in overtime gave the Anaheim Ducks a 4-3 victory over the Dallas Stars on Tuesday night.

The Stars appeared to have the game well in hand when they led 3-0 with less than two minutes to play in the second period. But Joffrey Lupul came out of the penalty box and scored on a breakaway with 1:36 left in the period to give the Ducks some life.

Sexton, who was called up after Teemu Selanne broke his left hand last Thursday, then played a period the future Hall of Famer would have been proud of. He got the Ducks within a goal at 6:08 of the third by flipping home a feed by Bobby Ryan.

"Take my coolest previous feeling and multiple it by 10, if not more," Sexton said. "That is what it was. I thought we were due to score, but once it actually happens, you're in shock. To get another one after that, it just felt like a dream. It was unbelievable."

The 5-foot-10, 170-pound undrafted free agent then forced overtime when he raced down the right side and beat Marty Turco with a bad-angled shot from the right circle with 62 seconds left in regulation.

"You throw it on net sometimes and good things happen," said Sexton, who finished with nine shots on goal. "I worked hard all night and it was great to see it pay off."

Koivu won it by backhanding his own rebound behind Turco to finish a 3-on-1 break.

"It felt great," Koivu said. "For my line and myself, there have been some chances in the last couple of games, but the puck hasn't gone in. We were down early in the game and battled back. Getting the winner in OT, there is a lot of stuff you can build on and hopefully bring into the next game."

The win snapped a five-game losing skid for the Ducks and the long-forgotten three-goal deficit matched the largest comeback win in franchise history.

It was the second time in as many games that the Stars blew a lead and lost after regulation. They wasted a 2-0 advantage in a 3-2 shootout loss to Edmonton on Saturday.

"Anytime you have a three-goal lead and you don't bring it home … you have to want the puck, you have to want to make plays," Stars coach Marc Crawford said. "You've got to be supportive of one another. We made a couple of mistakes in the third period that were non-supportive mistakes.

"In the third period, you knew they were going to come and make a push. That's the way they play. Our forwards were so supportive, but we got away from that at crucial moments. Those few mistakes we made ended up the difference-makers."

For nearly 40 minutes, the Stars had by far the better of the play.

Brad Richards opened the scoring 9:06 into the game, one-timing James Neal's passout from behind the net past Jean-Sebastien Giguere from the right circle. Mike Modano made it 2-0 at 10:59, ripping a blast past Giguere after a perfect pass by Steve Ott on a 2-on-1 break.

Richards got his second of the night 6:20 into the third period when his wrister from the right circle hit defenseman James Wisniewski and went behind Giguere.

"Trying to sit back and hope for wins in the third is never a good recipe for success," Dallas captain Brenden Morrow said after the Stars lost for the ninth time in 12 games that have gone past regulation. "We're pretty frustrated with the way we finished in some games here and there in the first third of the season."

Material from wire services and broadcast media was used in this report.

Carl Sneep give BC a big shot

Former Brainerd star defenseman Carl Sneep is turning into a nice offensive weaponfor Boston College this year. The Pittsburgh Penguins prospect already has six goals this year from the point and his shot was the talk of ESPNBoston recently.....

From ESPNBoston...

Carl Sneep can't help but smile a little bit when he's asked about his shot. The Boston College senior defenseman had scored six career goals entering the season, but the tying goal he scored on Saturday against BU was his sixth of this season.
Sneep's Eagles converted 15.8 percent of their power-play chances a season ago. So far this season, they're scoring at a 23.7 percent clip -- and having Sneep back at the blue line has been a big part of it.

"It's been unbelievable," forward Ben Smith said. "It's been great for us, especially on the power play. You know he's always back there cocked and ready to fire for us."
Sneep says he hasn't spent much extra time on his shot, and that he doesn't take aim at the net any more than anyone else in practice.

"It's not so much that my shot has gotten that much better," he said. "I've been getting in the right position to be an offensive player and be on the power play and be at that top position with guys who can feed the puck really well and getting shots off with traffic in front. It's more that than working on my shot."

The results, though, give him away. Saturday's goal was a bullet of a wrist shot from the point tucked beautifully under the crossbar, a goal scorer's goal if there ever was one.
"I was mostly just trying to hit the net," he said. "I was pretty fortunate that it went in."
Brian MacPherson is a special contributor to ESPN Boston.

Former Holy Angels Stars lead RPI

After stellar careers together at Holy Angels both Chase Polacek and Brian Brutlag decided to continue their hockey careers together out east at RPI (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute). Individually it has worked out great for both players who are now juniors as they have become the leaders for the Engineers. Polacek made the ECAC All-Rookie team his freshman year, led the team in scoring last year as a sophomore and again leads the team this year in scoring with 15 goals and 10 assists. Brutlag is an assistant captain and led all defensemen in points last year with three goals and 11 assists.

Polacek is second among all Minnesotans playing Division 1 hockey in scoring, just one point behind UMD's Jack Connolly who played high school hockey at The Marshall School in Duluth.

RPI is in a slight funk having lost three games in a row and plays a midweek game against conference foe Union tonight. With a 8-8-1 record RPI hopes to get a win before they below.500 for the first time this year.

There is a featured article with quotes from both Polacek and Brutlag.

Read Article HERE

From the Wild website-Fletcher Q & A

straight from www.minnesotawild.com an insightful Q & A with Wild GM Chuck Fletcher

Wild.Com: Are you at all surprised at the impact that the three players that you have brought in have made in a short time?

Chuck Fletcher: Well, what we’re hoping that there is a long-term impact. Oftentimes you’ll see new players go to a new team and play very well and make an immediate short-term impact. We’re hoping that these are players that can help us over the long term. We went about acquiring these players on the basis that we had needs on the team. Kobasew has brought a lot of grit, energy, speed and the ability to score some goals. Andrew Ebbett is a player who was on waivers. It’s very difficult to find centers so we thought it’d be smart to grab him. We weren’t sure where he would fit or how it would work out once we got here. But we just know it’s difficult to get centers, particularly centers with skill. And Latendresse, we gave up a really good young player in Benoit Pouliot. We just wanted to add a little bit more size to our forward group. He can play down low, win battles along the wall, finish checks and go to the net. We just thought Latendresse’s skill set was a better fit for our group.

WC: When talking about Kobasew and Latendresse since they’ve arrived, you’ve mentioned grit a lot. Did you think the previous roster lacked that?

CF: I thought coming out of training camp, we had some gritty players, certainly. I don’t think you can ever have enough of it. When you look at Kobasew and you look at Latendresse, we’re talking about two players that are comfortable playing in traffic, are strong on the wall, are willing to take a hit to make a play. They’re also capable of throwing a body check as well. They both have talent. They both can score goals. But when they’re not scoring goals, they’re contributing by winning battles and going in those high traffic areas. We thought we had players that did that on our team, but again, you can never have enough players like that on the team.

WC: Obviously the intention is to make the team better, but is there also the added element of giving players in that locker room a jolt by showing that you will do what it takes to make the team better?

CF: I think any time you make a move or a trade; you’re trying to do it with a longer-term goal in mind. If that’s a short-term benefit, that’s great. But I don’t know if I’m the person to speak to that. The players would have to answer the question of “Did it provide a spark?”Certainly the new players have contributed since they’ve been here, and again, I’m hoping all three of them will be contributing for a couple years down the road. That’ll be the true test: how the player fares over time. I’m confident all three of these players can be part of the group and help us win games. That really was the intention.

WC: When you see an Ebbett, or any player you like on the waiver wire, how does that process work with you and your staff?

CF: Teams have until noon Eastern Time every day to put a player on waivers. Generally speaking, if a player has played more than three years, once you get to your fourth year of professional hockey, you need to go through waivers before you can be sent to the minors. Usually, with an entry-level contract, you can send a player to the minors. But once he gets out of that first contract, typically he has to go through waivers before he can be sent to the minors. So, most days there seems to be one or two players on waivers as teams make moves and send players down and call players up. So you watch that process every day at noon. If there’s a player that you have interest in, you have until the following day to put in a claim. The priority of selection goes to the team with the lowest winning percentage to the team with the highest. Every team will have a crack, but the team with the lowest winning percentage will get that player.

WC: So if you do claim a player, your priority doesn’t change based on most recent move. If you have the lowest win percentage, you’d still have top priority the next day?

CF: Correct. In theory, if you’re the lowest team in the League, you can claim a player every day if there’s a player you want. Obviously, there’s a 23-man roster limitation and there’s salary cap restrictions in place that prevent you from hoarding players. And, if you do claim a player, you have to put him on your NHL team. If you try and send him to the minors, he has to clear waivers again. The team that originally lost him would have some rights to retain them.

WC: So in that span of 24 hours, what happens among you and your staff?

CF: I speak with Brent (Flahr) and Todd Richards, and any of our staff that know the player. Maybe they have a history with the player at another organization. You go back and you read all of your scouting reports, and you take a look at the cap situation and see if there’s a fit.Ultimately, the manager has to make a decision, but you put some time in and go through all the different steps to make sure it will work.

WC: As far as trades go, there really hasn’t been a lot of activity. You’ve made two of the six or so deals that have involved NHL players. Is this lack of activity just the way it is now in the NHL?

CF: It is. The majority of the teams in the League are at the cap or very near the cap. At this point in the year, we still have two-thirds of the season left, who whenever you acquire a player, you’re picking up two-thirds of the salary. So, in many cases, when you’re seeing a transaction, it’s pretty even in terms of salary exchanged.As the year goes on, and you get past that halfway mark of the season, teams are obviously acquiring a lot less salary so it’s easier to trade a prospect for a bigger-name player, because maybe you’re only picking up 40% of the salary. It’s a much smaller cap hit. I still believe you’ll see a lot of trades this year. There are so many teams that are competitive. There’s so much parity in the League. A lot of teams do want to make changes, and do want to get better in certain areas. A lot of them have to get to a point where they can afford to take them under a cap system.

WC: At this point, it looks like 29 teams, maybe even all 30; still have a chance in the playoffs. With every team seemingly picking up points, even in losses, things could be tight for a long time. Does that mean there may be fewer sellers at the deadline?

CF: Exactly. Every team still has a chance to make the playoffs. Once you get to 20 or 30 games left in the schedule, some teams realistically are not going to be in a good position. So they’ll have the ability to move some players for extra prospects and try to find a way to build for the future. At this point in the season, nobody is willing to make that concession because you want to compete and you want to win games.

WC: Even though you are still a long way from the deadline, do you still use this time to explore future trades, and have conversations about “If A and B happens, then we’ll be willing to trade player X?”

CF: Absolutely. I’m still probably on at least one call, maybe two per day. A lot of times it’s just checking in. “Are you doing anything? Are you looking for anything? Are you trying to trade anybody?” A lot of managers make calls just to gather information, and they file that information away. At some point, it may become valuable insight into any team. Needs change based on injuries and performance. Maybe there’s a team looking to acquire a defenseman and trade a forward, and maybe a month from now that makes sense to me. It’s just important to know what teams are trying to do, and most teams will tell you candidly what they’re trying to accomplish, where they want to upgrade, where they feel they have depth, what types of things they’d be willing to move.Let’s be honest, there are several teams in the League you talk to and you hear what they’re needs are, and what they’re willing to move. Sometimes it’s just not a fit. Other times it’s not a fit with the salary cap. So that’s while you’re always making calls, because the majority of calls that are made don’t lead to anything. But you have to put your time in and do your spadework and stay on top of the situation.

WCHA weekend ahead

The featured series of the weekend is UND at UMD showcasing the two WCHA champions from last year. The Fighting Sioux won the regular season championship last year while the Bulldogs won the WCHA Final Five propelling them into the NCAA tournament.
Read Series Preview via UMD HERE

Minnesota and Minnesota State-Mankato have developed a nice rivalry lately. In the last 14 meetings, the teams have played seven one-goal games and have had tied twice. The Gophers lost last Friday to Michigan and rebounded by beating Michigan St. The Mavericks swept Michigan Tech doubling their WCHA wins this season. MSU-Mankato is young and it will be the first time many get to see former Centennial star Tyler Pitlick who is being watched closely by NHL scouts to be picked in the 2010 NHL Early Entry Draft.

The Mavericks have two players who have been drafted: St. Louis Park's Andrew Sackrison is a St. Louis Blues propsect and Cloquet's Justin Jokinen is a Buffalo Sabres prospect.

Read Series Preview HERE

Blake, Kessel lead Toronto in victory

Moorhead native Jason Blake scored two goals and was named first star of the game in leading Toronto to a 6-2 win over Columbus. Former Gopher Phil Kessel was the second star of the game and he scored two goals as well. Kessel now has four goals in his past four games and 10 in his 15 games this year. He has 15 points in 15 games.

Blake now has four goals and 12 assists on the season.

Watch Game Highlights HERE