Per Dana Kamal and Chris Vivlamore, Mark Popovic and Slava Kozlov will be the scratches tonight in Minnesota and Johan Hedberg will get the nod in goal.
That means Arturs Kulda will be suiting up for his first NHL game and I’m very excited to see what he can do. The Latvian defenseman was drafted out of CSKA-Moscow and played the two season after being drafted with the Peterborough Petes where he was Zach Bogosian’s defense partner. They had a friendly rivalry going in prospect camp in the summer of 2008 just a few weeks after Bogosian was drafted and they’re fairly good friends.
Kulda is a solid stay-at-home defender who loves to hit. 2006 was a top-heavy draft and there were only a handful of players taken in the fourth through seventh rounds who earned any time in the NHL last season with just one- Derek Dorsett- playing more than three games. A few more have made it this season, like Toronto’s Viktor Stalberg, but Kulda will be one of the first defenseman from the later half of his draft to get some NHL time. Considering he was taken in the seventh round that’s fairly impressive.
The AHL plus-minus leader is known to read this blog on occasion, and if he does well enough tonight to warrant some more time after the Olympic break I’ll be sure to do a Q&A with him. Regardless of how he does my assumption is that he’ll go back to the AHL after Saturday’s game to keep playing during the Olympics. The Wolves are gunning for a division title and they’ll need their best defensive defenseman. How can he be sent down when there’s an NHL roster freeze in place? Well, teams can reassign players until after Sunday night’s game as long as they don’t have to claim waivers first. Kulda is the only player on the roster that falls into that category other than Kane and Bogosian, who are both too young to play in the AHL, and Ondrej Pavelec who will be in Vancouver at the Olympics.
There was a little bit of trade action in the NHL today leading up to the freeze, but the real excitement will begin after the Olympics. Don’t be surprised if there are some quick trades on March 1 when the freeze is lifted. General managers might not be able to pull the trigger on trades for the next two weeks but that doesn’t prevent them from talking and negotiating.
Tonight’s game begins at 8. The liveblog will kick off at 7:45.
Man, If Kulda plays hard and keeps up some good +/-, then we resign Kubina, we would have GREAT defensinve potential.
Enstrom-Kubina
Hainsey-Oduya
Bogo-Kulda
WOW!
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Btw, the iPhone app is out. Not bad for version 1.1
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Why are we getting all these defensemen, why are we not working on our goaltending?????
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So you’re done with Boris, Brandon?
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ya valabik was killing it before he got hurt!
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I’m not done with him because i thought he and Schubert were great together for our third pairing (at times, better than our second IMO). Plus, I feel like Pops has played well too. Either way, we SHOULD have a very solid D.
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@DD: goaltending is as good as its ever been, not perfect, but very consistant. Stop whinnning.
Kulda looked good. He played physical in a couple of key spots tonight. I liked what I saw so far. Good things are coming from this kid.
Good win tonight, would have like to have seen more in the second. It got kind of boring/lazy there in the second.
Overall in huge win in a place where the home team doesn’t lose much. Was I correct in hearing the wild were 17-2 on home ice (now 17-3)? Wow, that’s a huge stat to overcome!
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I’m glad for Bergfors and the Thrash. Solid win and three out of 4 points so far on this road trip.
I’m also happy for Ilya…scored his first goal as a Devil…and it was the game-winner, of course.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRSRhp04uVc
NJ fans threw hats on the ice to celebrate. They know they’ve got a good thing.
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That’s right, Sam! They do have a good thing! Now Kovy just needs another game winner to catch up with Bergfors in GWGs and another goal after that to catch up with Nic’s three goals.
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LOL, farmboy. That was Ilya’s 32nd goal.
Bergfors’s got 16 and Nic’s got 15. Who’s got to catch up with who?
There’s plenty of hockey love to go around. I can be happy for all of them.
And I want Kubina and Max to have some incentive to re-sign in Atlanta after this season. With Ilya gone, they’re in the top 5 in Thrasher scoring. We need them. And more wins will help give them that incentive to stay.
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Hopefully Kulda will stay in NHL. I want to see him in Olympics, but without him defensive line still looks very good.
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Since the trade, Sam, since the trade. Kovy has to catch up with Niclas Bergfors’ 2 GWGs and 3 total goals.
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