Wild Night

Tonight the Canes take on the Wild in the final regular season game of the year for Carolina against the Northwest Division. The Canes have yet to win one of these, maybe tonight is the night to break the spell. It won't be easy though, Minnesota is 19-5-3 at home which is one of the better home records in the NHL. The Hurricanes have won 2 in a row and are 4-4-2 in their last 10.

I was listening to 850 The Buzz yesterday and Adam Gold had John Forslund on the air as well as Scottie Walker. The good news is that Walker will play tonight. He just has a sore hand/fist. The bad news is that Johnny Sideburns reported that Cole re-aggravated a previous injury and was doubtful to play. It was still too early to tell for sure, but his tone was doubtful. He also talked a bit about Belanger and hinted about the reasoning for that trade. It seemed Eric was unhappy, I guess he wanted a larger role on the team since he was in the last year of his contract. I'm sure he was feeling pressure to produce more, otherwise how was he going to get high contract offers next year? Apparently he and Laviolette disagreed, perhaps that was the reason for the healthy scratch last week? In any event, it doesn't matter now. As I said in my earlier post, Belanger never really seemed happy here. He admitted he was shocked about being traded from Los Angeles. Hopefully this change will be what's best for him as well as Big Joe.

Ryan Bayda will join the team before the game. Vasicek is likely to make it to St Paul before his new Hurricanes jersey does! The game will be on Fox 50 at 8 eastern with the pregame, "Hurricanes Live" 30 minutes before game time. I'll be in Charlotte tonight watching the Checkers play Texas and also watching UNC Charlotte take on UNC Chapel Hill after the Checkers game. A hockey double header, yippee! I'll report on that as well as the Canes upon my return. Good luck Canes!!

Van Morrison and John Mellencamp