The Marlies, including those three skaters, are the visitors Friday night at the MTS Centre, but nobody on the Moose seems worried about banging into or tussling with those who may have been exposed to the nasty bug.

"I think you're more apt to catch it if one guy on your own team has it," said veteran centre Marty Murray. "We're watching what we do with water bottles, towels, on airplanes... Like a lot of people, we're washing our hands and crossing our fingers."

The Moose at one point thought they might be included in the high-risk group that has priority for early H1N1 shots, but the team now says it will wait until the vaccine is available to the public.

"I wouldn't even have thought of it about Friday's game," Moose defenceman Nolan Baumgartner said. "We've played 19 games so far and I'm sure there have been other guys sick on other teams... We've had guys sick on our team this year, too. I just don't think we're concerned. If you get sick, you get sick... We're taking precautions. You see all the hand-sanitizers around here. We have our own water bottles."

Power play evolving

THE power play is a good bet to help the team break out of its drought of having scored just nine goals in the last 10 games, about the worst offensive stretch in franchise history.

But Wednesday's power-play time during the practice of more than two hours at the MTS Centre was hit-and-miss. At times, lots of miss.

"Ah, it's always a work in progress," coach Scott Arniel said, his team without a power-play goal in each of its five straight losses (zero for 19). "You're constantly trying to work on creating shots and it gets hard, because guys don't want to hit each other in front of the net with shots. ."

With eight regulars out, either hurt or in Vancouver or both, the team can't really afford to start implementing risky practice habits.

'Bag skate' punishing

ARNIEL said that Wednesday's long conditioning skate at the end of a two-hours-plus practice was just normal routine.

"We haven't had a chance to do much of that conditioning," he said after what's generally known as a "bag skate."

tim.campbell@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition November 12, 2009 C3