For Tuesday's paper, I wrote about Zach Parise and Ryan Suter working Monday with Hall of Famer Adam Oates. I received some Twitter questions asking what the Wild coaches felt about that, so I figured I should clarify one thing: This was not some sort of slap to the face of the coaching staff.
Oates worked with them on individual skills like net-front, where to position pucks on screens, how to protect the puck coming around the net and one-timers. I found it fascinating and fun to watch, and like I wrote, most interesting to me was watching Suter one-time puck after puck with passes from the opposite half wall the Wild typically sets up from. It just made me wonder if this is something the Wild may try in camp because it may better utilize Suter's one-timer. I've asked Yeo and GM Chuck Fletcher in the past couple weeks about this setup, and both have told me it's a possibility.
But Parise and Suter weren't devising any power-play schemes or setups or anything like that with Oates. They were simply working on their game as camp approaches Thursday.
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