After skating fully in the non-power play portion of today's practice, Rod Brind'Amour said he felt better and still hopes to be ready for opening night on October 10, if not sooner.

Paul Branecky

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"I'm definitely shooting for opening night," he said.  "I'd like to get one game in just for timing, but if that doesn't happen it doesn't happen.  The main thing is to get ready for when it counts."

As is often the case with Brind'Amour, who sometimes needs to be held back from returning to soon instead of being told when to come back, there's been a little disagreement with the doctors, but nothing too serious.

"I know the longer I stay off the longer it's going to take me to get my game back," he said.  "They're more worried about my knee, so there's a big of a yin and yang thing going on.  I listen to them for the most part."

Brind'Amour did say that he's not having to think about his knee when skating or pushing off, and his main worry now is getting his ryhthm back before returning to game action.

"Over the years I always used to panic in camp because I was so bad, but I'd realize that if I take the three weeks I'd get my hands back," he said.  "I don't have three weeks now, so that's where I'm a little bit concerned.  Hopefully I'll be still decent enough to make an impact."

Tomorrow night's lineups vs. Nashville are below - starting to resemble the projected opening night roster more and more.  The successful first line from Sunday's win over Philadelphia remains intact.  Also, Cullen, Gleason and Babchuk are in, good enough to remove them from the injury report for now.