November 15

Gabby, Veilleux Back

After missing five of the Wild's past seven games because of a sore groin, Marian Gaborik will be back in the lineup when Minnesota takes on the Oilers in Edmonton tonight. The Wild have lost their last two games, both on the road in Colorado and Calgary, and haven't won since beating the Oil 3-2 on November 5th. In the games Gabby has missed Minnesota has gone 1-4. Left wing Stephane Veilleux will also be back on the ice tonight after missing the last two games with a broken cheekbone.

In other Wild news, the club assigned defenseman Andre Lakos to Farjestad of the Swedish Elite League. Lakos, signed out of Austria to a one-year deal in June, had been with Houston in the American Hockey League. "He came over with the idea he'd get a shot at the NHL level", said GM Doug Risebrough, who added that Lako's play showed he wasn't motivated to stay here.


Wolves Win

The Minnesota Timberwolves won their first game of the season, or should I say first of the post-Kevin Garnett era, 108-103 over Sacramento Wednesday night. I was lucky enough to get an invite and free ticket from a buddy of mine to catch the game in person. Overall this years squad didn't look bad, but granted they were playing a Kings team that was 2-5. Rashad McCants finished with 33 points, Al Jefferson 23, and Antoine Walker added 19 off the bench. Last night was the first Wolves game I watched of the season, and It'll be interesting to see how the duo of McCants and Jefferson fair as the season goes on. While you don't necessarily want to call them Garnett and Marbury, you can see a little bit of chemistry developing on the court. With such a young team, and coach, you can see what Kevin McHale was trying to do in starting over, but hopefully the moves made by frankenstein to assemble this squad don't have the same disastrous results like so many of his others. The one thing I came away with from last nights game was how sparcly populated the Discount Center was. The attendance wasn't announced during the game, and was listed in the paper as 11,656 but I'm guessing that was the tickets sold and not the on hand crowd. The first deck was maybe 60 percent full, with patches scattered around the second deck, and I would guess that somewhere in the neighborhood of 8,500-9,000 were in the house. I can remember during the Harv and Marv, Pooh Richardson, Chuck Person, and J.R Rider days when the attendance was always announced as being sold-out but never was in house, and it does make you wonder had Kevin Garnett not come around would the team have gone the route of the Vancouver Grizzles or stayed for several sub .500 mediocre, 6,000 a night seasons?


Be sure to log onto www.thestitch.us