The Milwaukee Admirals returned to practice today at the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena after splitting their weekend road trip against the Manitoba Moose. The Admirals are setting up for their first three-in-three weekend of the season which starts Friday night on home ice against the Iowa Wild. What follows is the first of a four-game road trip with the Grand Rapids Griffins on Saturday night, Chicago Wolves on Sunday afternoon, and then resuming the following weekend at the Quicken Loans Arena against the Cleveland Monsters.

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You might notice the excellent news within the forward group witnessed at today’s practice. For starters: Emil Pettersson is back and ready to go. This was followed by the really fun news that Frédérick Gaudreau was reassigned by the Nashville Predators and brought right back into the fold here in Milwaukee. It’s rather amazing how two roster returns can feel like such a sudden lift, eh?

Gaudreau started this season with the Admirals and did have a spell back in the AHL briefly after a recall. In total he has produced 4 points (1 goal, 3 assists) in 7 games with the Admirals. He has also produced 3 points (0 goals, 3 assists) in 17 games with the Predators.

You’ll then notice that I did not include defensive pairings. That’s really just on my side of things because, outside of Trevor Murphy and Petter Granberg, I really didn’t see any set pairings in today’s practice. There are lots and lots of switches and variations in play between the defensive group that it feels as though it takes until gameday to know who fits in where.

After today’s practice concluded I gave our Twitter followers a chance to give a shout out to who they wanted to hear from. This season I’ve been making Chatterbox rather short and sweet at four players a pop. Today we’ve extended things quite a bit. Kick back and enjoy all of today’s interviews from the UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena.

Do you think that this gap between games, such as this week and next week, can be beneficial for the Milwaukee Admirals to gather up some energy and get back to the basics in practice? How does the return of Gaudreau and Pettersson change your outlook for the weekend? Does anyone else have a feeling in their stomach that the “Juuse Saros Everywhere but Milwaukee: AHL World Tour” will continue in the very near future?

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