Good afternoon from the mothership -- Star Tribune headquarters, where people always know something's up when I actually walk in the building. It's just so rare.
Typically it's just a meeting with the editors, but today it was laptop issues.
Better now than Opening Night, which happened to me last year in Columbus when my laptop was hit by the same nasty virus I got today. Luckily, the crack Blue Jackets PR staff hooked me up with a laptop and IT guy, making what could have been a nightmare into a very slight blip (other than the awful game story I wrote after not watching half the game).
The office has been pretty quiet -- the calm before the storm with the Twins and Vikings playing downtown tonight at the same time. Chip and Judd have been hard at work chatting with Star Tribune readers, Kent Youngblood's been on the phone working stories and it only took me two hours to install a printer to print out my expense report.
Not kidding.
Last night, I drove out to Eden Prairie to Velocity Hockey Center to watch the 3-on-3 tournament organized by Octagon Player Agency. Very fun time, with the red team beating the white team 22-21. Red was led by Wild players Brent Burns, Nick Schultz, Cal Clutterbuck and Cam Barker. Burns spent the night showing off with a ton of sweet plays. Schultz was scoring on breakaways and dekes.
In fact, there was a beautiful 2-on-0 between Burns and Schultz -- a scenario we probably won't see a lot once the Wild get started. Coach Todd Richards loves his defensemen getting involved in the offense, but a Burns-Schultz 2-on-0 might even be too much for the coach nicknamed inside the locker room, "Moose."
Chris McAlpine, the former player, now agent, was named Red MVP by Burns. He paraded a garbage can around the rink when it was over. McAlpine scored a really nice goal off a Schultz feed, swung and missed on a slap shot after Keith Ballard sneakily slashed his stick from the white bench, nearly decapitated a small child with his blade after the broken stick, jokingly snapped at colleague Ben Hankinson when the white team coach gave himself the authority to wave off a late red goal and most impressively, didn't accidentally tweet his cell phone number like he did last year.
