Wild on Fire, Literally

Lately, the Minnesota Wild have been on a hot streak. They have won 8 of their last 10 games. But today the team expected the type of fire no one wants, a real fire.

The team is on a road trip, where they faced the Montreal Canadiens Thursday night and is in Ottawa to play the Senators Saturday efirevening. But that’s currently in the air as the team’s equipment went up in smoke Friday afternoon when a truck carrying the team’s equipment from the Kanata Recreation Center (where the Wild practiced Friday afternoon) back to Scotiabank Place.

In a release, the team said it was still trying to assess the damage.

“Some of the Minnesota Wild’s equipment has been damaged,” the release said. “The Wild is in the process of taking inventory to determine the damage to our equipment.” Some of the equipment was reportedly salvaged.

Assistant Equipment Manager Brent Proulx, who travels with the team tonight, is going to board a plane back to Minnesota tonight. Proulx, Assistant Equipment Manager Matt Benz and Chris Pietrzak-Wegner will gather replacement equipment and load it onto a plane bound for Ottawa at 5:30 AM tomorrow morning.

The Wild’s team bus had departed the practice rink separately and dropped several players off at a local restaurant area. Head Coach Todd Richards was notified just as the bus pulled into the hotel parking lot. Richards returned to the scene with Assistant to the General Manager, Jim Mill, and PR coordinator, Ryan Stanzel.

The move is harder than it sounds, as most players need several hours on the ice to break-in new equipment. The pieces that are the toughest to break-in are skates, goalie catching gloves and pads. If they are able to pull off this miracle and win tomorrow, hat’s off to the Wild organization.

One comment

  1. What I would like to know, is most players do not use equipment that is brand new. You look at some of the players shoulder pads for example, some players have basically nothing or equipment that was made way back in the day. I wonder what players do for that?

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