Wild "ready and focused?"; Wild's end-of-the-year "pace"

Afternoon from Denver, where it's snowing. Better than 1 degree last night.

But onto Phoenix tomorrow.

Late blog because I lost the first one much to the pain of my editor's eardrum. I lost it the second he picked up the phone from one of my thousand phone calls a day. Hey, I'm not an emailer. In fact, I hate email, which some of you know by my five word replies to your emails. It's nothing personal, trust me. I just hate email. I write so much during the day, the last thing I want to do is email.

This could be the blog of the year, eh? Imagine how good the first one was.

Jose Theodore gets the start tonight against his former team. That decision was actually made before the All-Star break and the Wild's sticking to it despite Niklas Backstrom's two shutouts in the last four starts. Theodore looked sharp in the morning skate on the ice he eliminated the Wild on in the 2008 playoffs.

The rest of the Wild? Not sure if they were sharp or tight or what. It was one of the quietest skates and postskate locker rooms I can remember, but coach Todd Richards is convinced it's because they're "focused and ready."

I'll be interested to see if the Avs are rusty. They haven't played since before the All-Star break.

But the Wild's actually on pace for the 8th-most points in the conference. Minnesota's on pace for 93.48; 8th-place Chicago is on pace for 93.25. So AS OF NOW (that's key because it changes nightly), 93-94 points could get you in. The Wild's also got the 4th-most non-shootout wins in the entire conference (25), which is key because that's the first tiebreaker when points are tied at the end of the season. Only division leaders Vancouver, Detroit and Dallas have more non-shootout wins than the Wild.

Peter Forsberg is skating with the Avs still. Not signed yet, and he didn't sound too confident yesterday that his foot is good enough.

Everybody catch the Brent Johnson-Rick DiPietro one-punch knockout last night?

Here it is:

I'll be writing about this tomorrow because Bob Mason and Niklas Backstrom had some good lines.