Bouchard making progress

Coming to you live from the NHL Tonight Studios inside Xcel Energy Center, where Wild radio personality Kevin Falness has been kind enough to let me borrow his desktop to blog because I left my laptop at home and need to run some errands before getting home.

And I would not want to make you wait for the blog. As I always say, Falness is nothing if not kind. And not obnoxious.

Wild vs. Terry Murray's Los Angeles Kings tonight. The Kings are second in the West and have won three of their last four. Big news from them today is Brayden Schenn will be taken out of the lineup. But the coach loves the kid, and I'd think he'd spend the rest of the season with the Kings and not be returned to junior. That 10-game threshold is coming up. Defenseman Drew Doughty (concussion) is progressing and could return to the team at some point on their road trip that continues in Chicago and Dallas.

This morning, Wild forward Pierre-Marc Bouchard began Day 2 of battle drills down low after the morning skate. Today, it was assistant coach Darby Hendrickson who did the leaning into Bouchard. Good stuff from Darby will be in tomorrow's notebook, and well as from Bouchard.

"I knew I was not going to get crushed. It's a start," said Bouchard. On the leaning, he said how exhausting it is, despite the amount of hard work he's put in at the gym and after practice skating. "You can see my face right now, it's pretty red."

Bouchard said he has talked to GM Chuck Fletcher about maybe going to Houston for a rehab stint eventually. A decision hasn't been made, but Bouchard said he's "open" to that. Remember, Kurtis Foster did that a few years ago when returning from a broken leg. Bouchard would be allowed to go down there for up to two weeks, but if that's the ultimate decision, I bet he goes for two, maybe three games.

Bouchard said no decision has been made, like I said above. He said he'd like at least a week more of battle drills.

Cam Barker will miss his second game with a groin injury, meaning Clayton Stoner plays tonight. Chuck Kobasew (groin) will play.

Had a long talk with Willie Mitchell. Great stuff from him on a lot of subjects, most of which I'll hold for a little bit for a few stories I'm working on. Mitchell was real good talking about his buddy, Twins first baseman Justin Morneau's return from a concussion. Mitchell's return this preseason with LA came after eight months off because of a concussion. I'll squeeze Mitchell on Morneau into tomorrow's paper.

Great stuff from Terry Murray today on a bunch of subjects, too. I may hold a bunch of that for my Sunday Insider, but Murray is the only active coach in the NHL that was a head coach in the 80s, 90s, 00s and 10s. He talked a lot about how the game has changed, told some funny stories about his brother, Ottawa GM Bryan Murray, and talked about soon-to-be Hall of Famer Dino Ciccarelli.

Nothing else much going on. Stemming from last week's incident with the fan and Vancouver's Rick Rypien, nothing will change with the visitors' tunnel today other than increased security. But there is no higher barrier separating the fans from the bench and there is no permanent canopy. Speaking of Rypien, he's scheduled to talk to the Vancouver media for the first time since grabbing the Wild fan last Tuesday.