ST. PAUL, Minn.—Mike Ramsey and his right eye have been cleared for takeoff.
Minnesota’s assistant coach walked off the ice following Friday morning’s skatearound and smiled as he shared the news. He’ll finally join the rest of the Wild on the road when they fly to Colorado on Saturday for to prepare for Games 3 and 4 against the Avalanche.
Ramsey had surgery in the middle of February to repair a detached retina, and he had a gas bubble inserted in the eye to hold it in place. Finally, when he woke up Wednesday morning, the bubble was gone.
“I knew it was coming. It was a gradual process,” he said.
Ramsey had a previous problem with cataracts, so when he began to notice “a lot of floaters” in his eye while the Wild were on a trip to Edmonton and Vancouver he wondered if it was a recurrence. Then during a home game against Nashville a few days later, Ramsey’s eye was even worse.
“I was sitting on the bench, and it was like somebody pulling a shade down over your eye,” he said.
The operation required a recovery much longer than Ramsey would have preferred, even though he has always been anxious about being on airplanes.
“You’re not going on the road, you’re not part of the group, you’re not part of the team,” he said. “That says it all right there.”
If he was unable to fly with the team this weekend, Ramsey—who grew up in south Minneapolis and played for the Gophers and on the U.S. Olympic team before an 18-year NHL career—planned to drive to Denver with his father.
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NOT WHERE THEY WANT TO BE:@ While the rest of the overworked Wild defensemen were racing up and down the ice during Friday’s game, two of their blue-line teammates were up in the press box watching.
Kurtis Foster, who broke his left femur in a freak collision into the boards on March 19, came to see his first game since the injury. He sat in a room with his fiancee and Nick Schultz, whose ruptured appendix required an operation on Monday and knocked him out of this Western Conference quarterfinal series against the Avalanche.
Speaking to reporters during the first intermission, Schultz looked like he was on the road to recovery, but he hasn’t reached the end yet. For now, he’s in that pro sports netherworld, “day to day.”
“Just try to see how it feels and the comfort level and make sure everything heals properly,” he said.
Schultz is shooting for a second-round return. He has to regain his stamina and fight through some of the nausea that follows an appendectomy. He might be able to start skating lightly next week.
“You want to be out there right now. I’d love to play tonight, but it’s not realistic and it’s something that when I’m ready, I’ll be out there,” Schultz said.
As for Foster, he was injured during a fight by San Jose’s Torrey Mitchell to avoid a no-touch icing call that has driven some discussion about eliminating the rule because of the potentially dangerous situations—as Foster can attest—the scramble can create.
Commissioner Gary Bettman, in a news conference at Xcel Energy Center before the game, said there was no immediate chance of changing the rule. He said both general managers and players have expressed a preference to keep it.
“They don’t like the spectacle of a player just stopping and waiting for the puck to go down,” said Bettman, who travels across the continent during the playoffs to see as many games as possible.
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BOOGEY DOWN:@ Chris Simon was scratched again for Friday’s game and Mark Parrish was out with a concussion, so that again meant more minutes for enforcer Derek Boogaard up front. He didn’t play as much—about 6 minutes—as he did on Wednesday, but he made three hits and kept the Avs from getting too comfortable whenever he was on the ice.
After practice on Thursday, coach Jacques Lemaire said he was happy with the way Boogaard played. At times, the 6-foot-7, 260-pound heavyweight looked like an offensive liability near the net, but Lemaire said half-jokingly that Boogaard is bound to score one of these games.
“Sometimes guys are trying to make plays and you can’t score because the other team is sharp,” Lemaire said. “The skill players are trying to make plays and trying to get shots on net, and it doesn’t work. Sometimes you think that, well, maybe Boogey is going to go in front and we’ll send the puck in front and it might hit his pants and go in.”
