Good morning from a hotel room somewhere.
I figured I'd check in, you know, to kill some time with a little blog. Just not a lot of juicy nuggets for you, unless you're amped up to find out the national TV schedule, which the NHL should release at some point today. Of course, the good thing about that is then the Wild can follow at some point afterward with its local TV schedule.
Training camp, which begins Sept. 17 in St. Paul, is closing in fast as this LOOOOOONNNNNNNGGGGG offseason finally comes to a close. No end of the summer blues for moi. Well, maybe a little.
Players are slowly starting to trickle into town and there are a couple neat pre-training hockey camps going on right now. The Octagon player agency is hosting a bunch of players in St. Louis Park, while Neil Sheehy's camp is going on at Augsburg College. There are NHL, college, minor-league, other pro and high school players at those rinks.
As for the Wild, things are quiet as they continue to prepare for training camp and its Oct. 1-8 trip to Helsinki, Finland.
As of now, they still have not decided whether they'll hire an extra scout or third assistant coach, I'm told. They are in the midst of looking for some more minor-league depth and another goalie.
I corresponded yesterday with GM Chuck Fletcher, and he says Pierre-Marc Bouchard is skating and continues to progress.
Traverse City also begins soon. The roster was on a previous blog. Some interesting tryout players, including JT Barnett, the son of former Phoenix Coyotes GM and agent Mike Barnett. If you remember, Barnett had a solid development camp on a tryout for the Wild and the team's bringing him back for the prospect camp.
