Wild goaltender Niklas Backstrom gave new meaning to holding a hot
hand Saturday at Minnesota's pre-game skate.
The Wild took to the ice at Scotiabank Place to prepare
before Saturday night's 4-1 loss to the Ottawa Senators bearing
signs of the fire a day earlier that destroyed much of the team's
equipment.
Backstrom broke in new pads after most of his gear was lost,
save for a catching glove that still bore burn marks across the
leather.
"It's not the way you want to prepare for a game, but the
trainers did an unbelievable job to even make this game possible,"
said Backstrom, who wasn't using the hard luck as an excuse. "That
would be the easy way out to hide behind that. I didn't play a good
game, I don't think as a team we played a good game. It would be
easy to hide behind all those excuses but that's not going to make
us better."
His backup, Josh Harding, was wearing a mask from the
previous season that had a different number emblazoned on it than
the No. 37 he currently wears. Defenceman Nick Schultz — who
assisted on the Wild's only goal, by Martin Havlat — sported
a pair of shoulder pads that he'd dropped $200 on at an Ottawa-area
sports store.
In his 14th NHL season, left winger Andrew Brunette said he's
never seen anything like it.
"It's just unbelievable," Brunette said after practice, as
his teammates still were busy cutting and taping new sticks after
the team's equipment staff spent much of the night scrambling for
replacement gear.
"I thought it was a joke. The phone was going off (Friday)
and our truck was burnt.
"Your first thought is to make sure everybody was okay,
obviously, but I never thought it was as serious as it was. To lose
the amount of equipment we did, especially our goalies, it's a
little bit of an obstacle here to overcome."
Brunette was a little more light-hearted about the incident
than other members of the Wild. He was one of nine players who were
fortunate to have recovered all of their gear intact.
"My stuff's OK. I was one of the lucky ones," said Brunette,
before pointing to his locker-room neighbour, Antti Miettinen.
"Guys like Antti beside me lost everything. ... Our goalies, to
have new gear and wearing stuff they're not used to, it's a pretty
big deal."
The Wild had practised at a community complex about a
five-minute drive from Scotiabank Place on Friday since the arena
was booked for a concert that night.
At about 2: 30 p.m. ET, the fire department had to be called
to the loading dock area after a fire broke out in the back of the
cube van carrying all of the team's equipment from practice.
There were no injuries and no cause has been determined.
"We'll have to look into insurance for sure and I'm sure the
police will have a report, but at this stage, I just don't have any
information," said Wild general manager Chuck Fletcher.
That made for a long night for head equipment manager Tony
Dacosta and his staff.
The team dispatched assistant equipment manager Brent Proulx
back to Minnesota to retrieve replacement gear, which arrived on a
charter flight not long before the team's skate Saturday morning.
Initially it was feared that all of the contents of the van
had been destroyed, but, in addition to the equipment of the nine
players, the team's video and some of the coaching equipment was
okay, along with medical supplies and items like knee braces.
"It went from a real bad situation to just a bad one,"
Fletcher said.
The team was in frequent contact with the NHL offices
throughout the night, but the idea of cancelling the game didn't
come up.
Minnesota's main concern in getting replacement gear was that
the players wouldn't be put at risk.
"We're taking that part seriously," Fletcher said. "We want
to make sure there's no health risk and we're not putting anybody
in danger by going out there. I think the players all feel
comfortable that it's more of a comfort issue and breaking in
equipment issue than it is a health issue."
Schultz was also pretty upbeat, although he said it might be
too early for joking about the incident just yet.
"I think the trainers are probably still a little sensitive,"
he said, adding that he was just trying to help them out by
venturing out on his own Friday night to acquire some gear. He also
had the trainers pick up an old pair of skates he had lying around
at home.
"I don't think (Dacosta) wants to pay the $200 for the
shoulder pads, but hopefully he'll reimburse me."
The Wild also play twice more before the Christmas break, so
players won't get much time to adapt to their new stuff.
Havlat was among those who spent the morning trying to break
in some new gear after all of his equipment was ruined.
"The skates are going to be hard," Havlat said. "Just to get
used to them, some guys need a few days, some guys need three or
four weeks."
Since both goalies lost their equipment, the Wild recalled
Anton Khudobin from Houston of the AHL as a precaution.
"It could have been more serious, so we're really fortunate,"
Backstrom said before the game.
It was a photo of Harding's charred mask that wound up
prominently displayed on many sports websites Friday when the story
broke.
"Every goalie's different and every pair of pads are a little
different," said Harding.
