Pregame names in the news: Erixon, Wolski, Prust...Otto?
90 minutes to game time.....a couple more notes
The Flames are dressing 14 players over 30. Among the Flames scratches that a comic/historian listed on the marker board in the Rangers locker room: Otto, Peplinksi, Fleury, MacDonald…
***
G Henrik Karlsson, 27, is 4-6-6 in his career. Why is he in instead of Mikka Kiprusoff?
“We have a plan," said coach Brent Sutter. “We’ve said all along that we want to see Kipper playing in less games. And he personally knows that it’s the right thing for him, too....So it’s managing the schedule properly . . . we don’t want Karl sitting for a month and not playing. We need him getting in games. This was something that was discussed in the summer.”
Karlsson lost 5-2 to the Blues earlier this year.
****
Just wrote a piece on the media crush surrounding soft-spoken Tim Erixon and how hard the Calgary fans took his defection. The web sites and local radio have the fans vowing to boo the &^%$#! out of him. Erixon said he has nothing against Calgary, and that if the booing happens, it won't bother him. For the full story, check in later. Brandon Prust, who played here for parts of three seasons, also is making his return. He said that he'll settle in after his first shift.
****
Wojtek Wolski, who has missed four of the first five games with a groin strain, pushed hard in today's morning skate and hopes to play on Saturday in Edmonton. He'll surely have to convince the coach.
The left wing, who said he hoped to be able to “go the full practice (Friday) without any pain”, denied that he heard or read John Tortorella’s comment on Wednesday (“We can’t get him out of the tub”) nor did he want to have it read to him. “I’ve been working hard at getting back as quickly as possible,” said Wolski, who is earning $3.8 million in the final year of his contract.
“I’m trying to simulate as much as I can what it’s like in a game and try to make sure that there’s no times where I feel like I don’t have the strength or the power to compete for pucks,” he said. “At this point in time I’m trying to make sure I’m healthy and it doesn’t keep creeping back every couple weeks, because I don’t want to be missing a game here, playing one and missing another one.”
***
Brad Richards wearing Flames colors? In the bidding for the free agent center’s services on July 1, “they were as close as any team who was there,” Richards said, and was impressed by the pitch from Calgary GM Jay Feaster, the former general manger in Tampa where Richards won a Stanley Cup. “I didn’t see Calgary in the picture; all along it just wasn’t a team that I saw because of cap space, but Jay called right away, so I wanted to hear him out. It was a great offer….In Tampa, he would always do whatever he could to help us.”
With the offers in the $60-million range, Richards was swayed by former Tampa coach Tortorella. “I’ve talked to lots of players who've played under Torts, and there’s some miserable days, some days you don’t know why you’re playing for him. But when you leave and don’t have that structure and don’t have that coach that cares and does everything he can to get the team prepared, you miss it. You know that every day he puts every ounce of his life in trying to get us a win and trying to make us better.”
***
Backup G Martin Biron, who played in the fifth regular-season game last season, is expected to start against either the Oilers on Saturday or the Jets on Monday. He was 8-6 with a 2.13 GAA last season before his collarbone was broken in practice last Feb. 28.
