Only four players practicing today

Martin Brodeur, Jay Pandolfo, Jay Leach and Anssi Salmela are the only players participating in today's practice, which has just begun.

Assistant coaches John MacLean and Tommy Albelin and goaltender Jacques Caron are also on the ice, but head coach Brent Sutter won't be on the ice today.

Pandolfo, Leach, Salmela, Maclean and Albelin are going through some drills and firing shots on Brodeur, who must be bored to death with this sort of thing right now.

Brodeur left after about 20 minutes.

***

The full team will gather at Prudential Center in a little while, have dinner and then bus to Long Island for Saturday's game against the Islanders.

Comments

[Nick]

I'm surprised that they got off after coming out so poorly to start last night's game.

[Sarah]

They have a game tomorrow, Nick, and have played every other day for the past 2 weeks. It also sounds like the stomach flu is going through the locker room. Despite the poor showing early yesterday, the better thing for this team right now is probably rest. They'll have time plenty of time to practice in their 4 days off next week.

[MW]

I agree, if Sutter wants to really work them in practice he will have a few days after the isles to do that. Now isn't the best time especially if guys are fighting illness.

[Prokat]

This time of year the players are beat up a bit and time off is valuable. Do you realize that the season is the longest of any professional sports team if they go to the Finals? 10 months from camp to finals.
Baseball is only 9 months and last I saw they're not checking and hitting bodies(Baseball does injections; A-roid)
What they don't need is more P-R-A-C-T-I-C-E after their brutal schedule since the All Star break.
These guys are human not robots.
Rest is a valuable tool.

[Captain Cornholio]

I would agree. They don't need to work on X's and O's this late in the season. Maybe the team had the flu on Tuesday against the Panthers and came out looking sick.