Good day from beautiful Raleigh, where I was the only person on my connecting flight from Hotlanta that wasn't wearing apparel from Duke, NC State, North Carolina, Georgia Tech, Miami or Clemson.
Yes, three football games from the Triangle this afternoon, so as you can imagine, as I drove past the RBC Center where the Hurricanes play, traffic was at a standstill. NC State's football stadium is on the same grounds, and there was a noon start.
I'll toss up last night's blog under this one. Our blogs were down last night, so I wasn't able to post. Real quick, in my daily update to you on my travel woes, today's was: We're descending into Raleigh, and all over a sudden, we climb and make a left. Nobody seemed to notice but me, and I go to the guy next to me, "That ain't good." The pilot comes on: Air Traffic Control had us going too fast and a plane in front going too slow, and suddenly we were about to rear end the sucker. OK, I'm exaggerating the last part, but we were too close to traffic in front because of incorrect speed given to the pilots in front of us.
It wasn't a big deal, but I know you really live to know my travel tales.
The Wild scrapped practice, which I genuinely appreciated due to the fact it would have let out roughly the same time 55,000 let out of the football game. Luckily, I had a story in the can. As you saw in today's notebook, I sat down with owner Craig Leipold about a variety of marquee events the Wild's trying to get. In Sunday's story (let's call it Part 2 in a series, although truthfully, as usual as my editor can attest, I overwrote and chopped 'em into two stories to run two days in a row), I talk to Leipold about how he's handling the Wild's start to the season.
He talks about coach Todd Richards, the team, attendance and has some funny anecdotes.
I also did a Sunday column on head shots. I was chatting with TSN's Bob McKenzie back and forth the other day via email, and he gave me the idea for at least the lead to the column. Bob and I were chatting about how Bobby Clarke went on TSN's Off the Record and said he'd be hesitant to play in today's game because it's "too dangerous." That's classic. Bobby Clarke, captain of the Broad Street Bullies, thinks it's too dangerous. But, Clarkie's got a point as today's NHL product is faster than ever. That makes it better than ever, but it also makes it more dangerous than ever.
The only player practicing for the Wild today is Niklas Backstrom. He wants to feel some pucks from the assistant coaches because there's no morning skate tomorrow due to Sunday's 12:30 p.m. CST puck drop. The rest of the Wild players were expected to get in an off-ice workout at the team's posh hotel -- a favorite among NHL teams that come to Raleigh -- and hopefully resurrect their legs.
