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The last couple of days this blog has been pretty much devoted to talking about the hiring of new assistant coach Steve Johnson. However, other things in the hockey world did not stop revolving when he was announced as assistant coach so I have some "catching up" to do. So below is a sampling of links and information that has come out the last few days that I have woefully have not been able to post about:

St. Cloud State Huskies

• Recently, the Huskies have been ranked as the #6 team in the nation for this upcoming season in the College Hockey News Preseason Top 10. Personally, (and I recognize some bias may be involved) I believe that the Inside College Hockey's Top 10 for '11 was much closer to being accurate when they placed St. Cloud as the #4 team in the nation for next season. With SCSU's current class and awesome incoming class (more on that coming soon) the Huskies should (at least) be a top 5 team in the nation. What do you think?
• Despite the TON of info and links I have previously given on the hiring of new assistant coach Steve Johnson, somehow I managed to leave out the main article from the St. Cloud Times. You can find that here.
• SCSU recently received a verbal commitment from defenseman Jarrod Rabey. Rabey currently plays for the USHL's Indiana Ice and hopes to join SCSU for the 2011-2012 season. He is a large (6' 1''/ 245 lbs.) offensive- defensemen who has some serious skating abilities and ability to move the puck.
• Kind of cool side note, Garrett Raboin and Bobby Goepfert are on the NHL 11 video game which recently came out (in addition to all the other Huskies playing in the NHL). Raboin on TPS and Goepfert still on his old team in Hamburg.

Sioux Falls Stampede

• Recently the Herd began their training camp. The team currently has 27 players fighting for 23 positions. The Stampede retained 9 of their players from last season. Their first preseason game is coming on Friday, Sept. 17th against Sioux City. They will be bringing the game to Brookings. Then on Saturday, Sept. 18th they will play against Des Moines in Luverene. I love that they are playing some games outside of USHL towns to promote the game.

Minnesota Wild

• Everyone's favorite Wild player, James Sheppard, looks to be out of the roster for at least 3-4 months because of an ATV accident. With centers Mikko Koivu, Matt Cullen, John Madden and Kyle Brodziak already on the roster and with youngsters Casey Wellman and Cody Almond fighting for a spot to play it was likely that Sheppard already was going to have a tough hill to climb in order to play this season. You can read about the indecent over at the Star Tribune or at Puck Daddy.
• It sounds as if Pierre-Marc Bouchard is making progress. You can read about his time in "pre-training camp" here.
• Lastly, you have to check out this video of the Minnesota Wild new 10 year anniversary logo being laid at center ice in the Xcel Energy Center: