Jet-lagged Wolves come up short

LINZ, Austria- The Thunder Bay Timberwolves arrived in Linz, Austria this morning at about six in the morning after leaving Quebec City on Tuesday night.
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For the players that were unable to sleep on the long flight over the Atlantic, they were only able to get about five hours in Linz before a mandatory skate at 1 pm. Followed by a team meeting.
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Also arriving in Austria was the newly signed, Eric Lindros. Lindros arrived about an hour after his teammates and said he didn't sleep at all on his flight over.
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"I got about an hour after arriving over here. But I was way too pumped to finally get back on the ice," said Lindros.
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Lindros was able to get into the lineup for tonights game against the Black Wings. But only after the team was able to find a seemstress to letter Lindros' brand new road blue Timberwolves sweater. Lindros will be wearing the number nine instead of his usual eighty-eight. Timberwolf players can only wear numbers between one and thirty-five.
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All this and there was still a game to be played. Thunder Bay came out hitting right off the faceoff. But Linz's focus was obviously more with scoring goals, and scoring early. At 8:23 into the first period, the Wings were already up 2-0. Scott Thornton took a bad roughing penalty and Linz took advantage. Scoring their third goal of the period two seconds after Thornton took a seat.
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Joe Pavelski (pictured) scored for Thunder Bay with the man-advantage less than fifteen minutes into the game. That would ultimately be the final goal for either team in this game. Linz won 3-1.
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Thunder Bay put twenty six shots on Ed Belfour in the last two periods. But "The Eagle" stopped everyone of them. Ten of those shots came off the stick of rookie, Bill Thomas. His second game with double digit shots since joining the Timberwolves.
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"We had our chances. But just couldn't get anything past Belfour," said Wolves assistant coach, Mike Ramsey. "I'm proud of the effort. Hopefully we can take this back over with us."
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The injury bug hit the Timberwolves for the third time in as many games. This time to their best defenseman in Keith Ballard. He suffered what trainers will only say is a "lower body injury". Ballard is expected to miss a week.
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Patrick Thoresen is expected to be in the lineup on Friday against Niagara Falls. Thoresen has been out since last weekends game against Karlstad with an undisclosed injury.
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Zack Stortini is officially out for the rest of the season. Stortini and the Wolves learned this afternoon that Zack had indeed torn his ACL against the Remparts. He will not travel with the team on road games, but will be cheering on his mates from the press box at CN Gardens.