Mike Yeo knows Kris Fredheim's game like the back of his hand. The Wild coach learned this morning though that he doesn't know how to pronounce his name.
I asked Yeo, the former Houston coach, to tell us about FRED-HAYM. Yeo corrected me, saying, "Fred-Hyme." We told Yeo Fredheim just told us it's, "HAYM,"
"Well, ok, he's wrong," Yeo said laughing. "Obviously I can't tell you very much about him because I've been calling him Fred-hyme for almost two years now and he never corrected me."
This is a reminder of the old, "Is it Zidlicky or Zidlitzky or Zhidlitzky?" Finally, at the Olympics in 2010, Zidlicky told me it's the latter, although now Zidlicky says it's Zhudlitzky.
Mercy!
Fredheim will make his NHL debut tonight against the struggling Colorado Avalanche, the team he watched a lot of during his college years because he played four years at Colorado College with Nate Prosser. This is a dream for both Prosser and Fredheim to be in the same NHL lineup tonight. These are two guys who used to flip and play Friday or Saturday nights at CC as freshmen.
Fredheim's parents, Mark and Trish, are coming in for the game from Vancouver Island and Fredheim said he'll keep it simple and do his best to get rid of the pregame jitters.
Yeo says Fredheim is "sneaky in his game. "He's not going to go out and knock anybody out, but he'll go into the corners, he'll compete, he'll win his battles, he thinks the game well, reads the play well, keeps the play in front of him and can execute. He's not going to go out and dazzle everybody with his skill level, but he'll execute the way we want it executed."
