Minnesota Wild president Doug Risebrough and coach Jacques Lemaire announced yesterday that forward Pavol Demitra will serve as team captain for the month of October. Brian Rolston and Wes Walz will serve as permanent alternate captains.
The Wild will see if it can continue its mastery of the Chicago Blackhawks at the home and season opener Thursday night. The Wild swept the four game series last season, won two pre-season games this year and is 17-6-l all-time in regular season games.
There’s talk that the locker rooms in the new TCF Bank Stadium will be named after former Gopher coach Murray Warmath who won the school’s last national championship in 1960.
What the new Big Ten Network means to fans with cable television here is that the Gopher road games the next two Saturdays at Indiana and Northwestern will not be seen on their TV sets. In past seasons most Big Ten Conference football games were televised even if the telecasts were via ESPN-Plus.
The Metropolitan Sports Facilities Commission has approved a 10-city listening tour regarding the Minnesota Vikings’ stadium needs. The tour will gather citizenry input starting with Duluth on October 23 and continue outstate until November 14 when there will be a meeting in Minneapolis.
Although the New York Mets blew their opportunity to make the playoffs, second baseman Luis Castillo was productive the last month of the season. Castillo, traded by the Twins in late July, hit .316 during September and .364 in the last 10 games of the season.
Left fielder Jason Kubel closed fast for the Twins, too. He hit .364 in August, .325 in September. His finished with a .273 average and major league career bests in homeruns, 13, and RBI, 65.
The Twins tied a franchise record this year by drawing over two million people for a third consecutive season. When the franchise starts playing in the new outdoor ballpark in 2010 the Twins are likely to draw around three million (a total exceeded only once in club history). At the old Met Stadium, playing outdoors, the Twins never drew two million in a single season.