Washington Capitals 3, Wild 1; Kobasew, Hnidy injured; No practice today

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.

Here's the blog from last night that never saw the light of day:

The pressure is on the Wild now to finish this 1-1-1 road trip on a good note Sunday during a matinee in Raleigh.

The Hurricanes lost in overtime to the Islanders tonight. That means Carolina is 0-10-4 in its past 14 games. The Hartford/Carolina winless record is 14 games, tied tonight. The Canes will be working desperately to keep from breaking that record against the Wild. The Wild came out with a solid start tonight before it just ran out of gas during a power play. After outshooting the Caps 7-1 early, the Capitals outshot the Wild 30-9 by the end of the second. Mike Green tied the score at 1-1 early in the second after Cal Clutterbuck scored his fourth goal. Then, early in the third, Brian Pothier scored. The Wild looked dead, but got a second wind and had several great chances late but couldn't tie it before Brooks Laich's questionable empty-netter after the linesman for some reason waved off an icing at the last second. You can read the game story for all the dirty little details, but the Wild just lost all its energy, probably due to a game the night before and a 3 a.m. arrival. Excuse, yes. But that's what happened. Plus, the Caps are awesome, even without Alex Ovechkin. I gushed and gushed nauseatingly over the Caps on Twitter tonight. But they're a great, well-balanced, well-coached team. The Wild just lacks legit finishers. It's that simple. The Wild flubbed odd-man rushes and even though it created chances, it couldn't score. This will be GM Chuck Fletcher's biggest chore as he tries to shape this franchise to play Todd Richards' system. The players are playing the system much, much better. But after creating the chances, they're not scoring. That's why the Wild lost last night in Tampa. The Wild dominated the game, caused Tampa Bay to cough up pucks, but what good was it? The Wild couldn't finish. I said on Twitter before the tying goal that I couldn't believe it was a 3-2 game because the Wild should have been up 5-1. So Fletcher's got some work ahead of him in a league where it's impossible to make a trade. And as we've talked about, the Wild don't have a ton of exchangeable pieces anyway. So good luck with all that, as Seinfeld would say. Can you tell I'm a Seinfeld fanatic? That is it for me. Another 3:45 a.m. wakeup call for me due to early flight to Raleigh, where I will somehow have to cover practice while combating 55,000 NC State football fans. Good luck with all that. Wild was missing Chuck Kobasew and Shane Hnidy tonight. Kobasew with an upper-body injury, Hnidy with a lower (left foot). Kobasew's expected to miss a couple of games. No real details offered about Hnidy. Bye.