Unless you spent your formative years in places in Russia like Novosibirsk, Moscow or St. Petersburg, you’re not going to be able to glean much insider information when Wild rookie center Danila Yurov speaks to his linemates before a faceoff.

For the past few weeks, the 21-year-old has had two fellow Russians on his line, with Vladimir Tarasenko on one wing and either Kirill Kaprizov or Yakov Trenin on the other.

Following the first three-point night of his young career — in the Wild’s 5-0 win over Washington on Tuesday — Yurov admitted that they speak English when talking to the defenders, and use their native language when talking to each other. So, when Yurov was about to take an offensive zone faceoff and directed Tarasenko to stay behind him, to be ready for the puck, unless you speak Russian, you had no idea it was coming.

When the puck hit the ice, Yurov swatted it back to Tarasenko, who fired a shot immediately, sailing over the goal line for a 3-0 Wild lead. Capitals goalie Charlie Lindgren clearly had no idea it was coming either.

“That’s a very unique situation in the NHL, where you can play with two Russian guys on the line, and it’s been fun, you know,” Tarasenko said, after his first two-goal game as a member of the Wild. “We played with Kirill before with all three that can talk in the native language and explain, express ourselves. It’s very nice.”

New in town

Picked by the Wild later in the first round of the 2022 NHL draft, Yurov signed with Minnesota in May after a few years in the Russian Kontinental Hockey League, where he won its championship two seasons ago. In his first training camp in Minnesota this year, Yurov sometimes had Tarasenko serve as his interpreter when talking with the media.

“I can speak English, but if I have Russian guy, I can do think(ing for) me,” Yurov said after the Washington game. “I don’t need think what to do I say. I improve my English, but it’s hard for me my first year. But I learn.”

Now in his third month in the NHL, Yurov’s English is developing almost as quickly as his on-ice importance for the Wild. But it took some time, especially early in the season. The NHL is a much faster and more physical brand of hockey than the KHL, and rather than throw him right into the fire, Wild coach John Hynes had Yurov watching from the pressbox for five games in the season’s first five weeks.

Kaprizov, who made the transition from the KHL to the NHL five years ago, said there are differences to be sure, but the root ability to play the game hasn’t changed for Yurov.

“It was different, some stuff. People play with more skill and play better in battles,” Kaprizov said. “But I just feel like hockey is everywhere. There are different leagues, and the NHL is the best league in the world, sometimes you need a little more time to feel comfortable.”

When injuries at center began to take their toll — with the Wild losing Marco Rossi and Ryan Hartman at various times — Yurov was elevated to center on the top line, which became an all-Russian group when an injury forced Mats Zuccarello to the injured list. Yurov also missed two games due to injury but has seemed like a different player since his return, looking more comfortable with the speed and intensity of NHL hockey, and with his Russian-speaking linemates to be sure.

The time he took to find his pace and his place was to be expected.

“I feel like you need some time when you come to the league to adjust,” Tarasenko said. “Everybody tried to help him, he is helping himself, and I feel like he’s stopped being scared to make a mistake and play confident hockey, play a very solid 200-foot game.”

Putting in the work

Perhaps initially overwhelmed by life in Minnesota and in the NHL, Yurov has made a herculean effort to learn, on and off the ice. And he has been helped, surely due in part to his likability, by teammates who want to see him succeed.

With the three other Russians on the team, he always has had someone to explain things in his own language. But the Swedes and the English speakers have all taken the new guy under their collective wings.

And when Zuccarello was injured by a hard hit in Seattle recently, it made an impression on the Wild that Yurov — who is not at all reputed as a tough guy — was the first red-and-green jersey into the scrum, not afraid to embark on a mission of revenge. Sticking up for your teammates is a vital lesson learned at all levels of hockey, on both sides of the Atlantic.

“I think that either someone has showed him or he’s played somewhere with a good culture,” Wild defenseman Zach Bogosian said. “That’s what happens on good teams with good cultures. That’s what we have here, and obviously he fits that bill. There’s usually a team bonding moment with situations like that. He didn’t think. He reacted off emotion, and that’s what you’re looking for.

After a recent morning skate, Yurov apparently wasn’t done working. He changed into shorts, t-shirt and athletic shoes, went back up to the arena to walk the bleachers, which were now devoid of spectators. He then began running the stairs, side to side, working both ankles again and again.

“It was just for my legs,” Yurov said later. “Its helped me for starting the game because we have late game, 7 o’clock, and for my first couple shifts, my legs, we need to be fresh and quick. It’s helped.”

And that night versus Washington, in his first three-point NHL game, Yurov looked fresh, quick, effective, and like a guy who is finding his place in a hurry.

Briefly

With defenseman Daemon Hunt injured during Tuesday’s home win versus Washington, and three other blueliners on the shelf, the Wild recalled Carson Lambos from their Iowa AHL team before heading to Columbus for Thursday’s meeting with the Blue Jackets. Lambos, 22, was the Wild’s first-round draft pick in 2021. He was recalled by Minnesota last season but has yet to make his NHL debut.

In a corresponding move, the Wild placed veteran Jonas Brodin on injured reserve. He has missed four games this season, including three in a row, with an upper-body injury.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge in the nation’s capital has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from enforcing policies limiting Congress members’ access to immigration detention facilities.

The judge ruled on Wednesday that it is likely illegal for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to demand a week’s notice from members of Congress seeking to visit and observe conditions in ICE facilities.

U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, who was nominated to the bench by Democratic President Joe Biden, concluded that the seven-day notice requirement likely exceeds the Department of Homeland Security’s statutory authority.

“Plaintiffs have an interest in facts about whether facilities are overcrowded or unsanitary, whether the staff is engaging in abuse, or the location of constituents or their family members,” the judge wrote.

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Twelve Democratic members of Congress sued in Washington, D.C., in July to challenge ICE’s amended visitor policies after they were denied entry to detention facilities. They also challenged a policy excluding ICE field offices as facilities that members of Congress are entitled to visit without notice. Their lawsuit accused Republican President Donald Trump’s administration of obstructing congressional oversight of the centers during its nationwide surge in immigration enforcement operations.

Government attorneys argued that the plaintiffs don’t have legal standing to bring their claims. They also said it’s merely speculative for the legislators to be concerned that conditions in ICE facilities change over the course of a week. The judge rejected those arguments.

“The changing conditions within ICE facilities means that it is likely impossible for a Member of Congress to reconstruct the conditions at a facility on the day that they initially sought to enter,” Cobb wrote.

By MICHAEL R. SISAK and LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend and longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell asked a federal judge on Wednesday to set aside her sex trafficking conviction and free her from a 20-year prison sentence, saying “substantial new evidence” has emerged proving that constitutional violations spoiled her trial.

Maxwell maintained in a habeas petition she has promised to file since August that information that would have resulted in her exoneration at her 2021 trial was withheld and false testimony was presented to the jury.

She said the cumulative effect of the constitutional violations resulted in a “complete miscarriage of justice.”

“Since the conclusion of her trial, substantial new evidence has emerged from related civil actions, Government disclosures, investigative reports, and documents demonstrating constitutional violations that undermined the fairness of her proceeding,” the filing in Manhattan federal court said. “In the light of the full evidentiary record, no reasonable juror would have convicted her.”

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The filing came just two days before records in her case were scheduled to be released publicly as a result of President Donald Trump’s signing of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The law, signed after months of public and political pressure, requires the Justice Department to provide the public with Epstein-related records by Dec. 19.

Forced to act by the new transparency law, the Justice Department has said it plans to release 18 categories of investigative materials gathered in the massive sex trafficking probe, including search warrants, financial records, notes from interviews with victims, and data from electronic devices.

Epstein, a millionaire financier, was arrested in July 2019 on sex trafficking charges. A month later, he was found dead in his cell at a New York federal jail and the death was ruled a suicide. Maxwell, a British socialite, was arrested a year later and was convicted of sex trafficking in December 2021. She was interviewed by the Justice Department’s second-in-command in July and was soon afterward moved from a federal prison in Florida to a prison camp in Texas.

After the Justice Department asked a New York federal judge to permit grand jury and discovery materials gathered prior to her trial to be released publicly, attorney David Markus wrote on her behalf that while Maxwell now “does not take a position” on unsealing documents from her case, doing so “would create undue prejudice so severe that it would foreclose the possibility of a fair retrial” if her habeas petition succeeds.

The records, Markus said, “contain untested and unproven allegations.”

Last week, Judge Paul A. Engelmayer in Manhattan granted the Justice Department’s request to publicly release the materials.

On Wednesday, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said during a news conference on another topic that he would follow the law and the judge’s orders pertaining to the records.

Engelmayer, who along with other judges had previously rejected Justice Department unsealing requests before the transparency law was passed, said the materials “do not identify any person other than Epstein and Maxwell as having had sexual contact with a minor.”

If you’ve been on the fence about buying tickets to see the touring revival of “The Wiz” that opened Tuesday night at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown Minneapolis, go ahead and do so right now. It’s a wildly entertaining, old school Broadway show that’s firing on all cylinders.

Written by musical prodigy Charlie Smalls in the early ’70s, “The Wiz” reimagines L. Frank Baum’s classic “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” as a Black fairy tale with an enchanting collection of songs that lean into jazz, blues and R&B. Two of the numbers, “Ease on Down the Road” and “Home,” crossed over into the mainstream. (A young Whitney Houston covered the latter when she made her television debut in 1983 on “The Merv Griffin Show.”)

Smalls, who studied at the Julliard School, died at the age of 43, but “The Wiz” has lived on, starting with the 1978 big-budget film adaptation (which, to be sure, has its detractors) and numerous revivals around the world, including an NBC live version in 2015.

The current iteration enjoyed a limited run on Broadway in 2024 before hitting the road for the current tour. It’s probably not a coincidence that “The Wiz” re-emerged at a time when Oz is front and center of pop culture thanks to the pair of “Wicked” films that are breaking records (even if the second one isn’t that great).

Thank Amber Ruffin for making this “Wiz” a must-see. The 46-year-old actor, writer and comedian has been on the “Late Night with Seth Meyers” staff for more than a decade and became the first Black woman to host a late-night talk show when she led “The Amber Ruffin Show” on Peacock for three seasons.

Ruffin previously made magic with Matthew López on their new musical take on the film “Some Like it Hot” that hit the Orpheum in October. On “The Wiz” she’s credited for “additional material for the production.” Her work here isn’t a rewrite as much as it is a refresh that replaces some of the extremely ’70s aspects of the original, fleshes out some of the characters and creates something that feels much more timeless.

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This new “Wiz” also incorporates more aspects of the Black experience, from a New Orleans-style parade to hip hop to Ballroom culture. It also boasts a terrific sense of humor, with Ruffin adding a series of gags and knowing nods to the audience. I found myself grinning throughout and I laughed out loud during the final scene featuring Evillene (Kyla Jade, who also plays Aunt Em), aka the Wicked Witch of the West.

There’s not a weak point in the production, with the four leads — Dorothy (Dana Cimone), the Scarecrow (Elijah Ahmad Lewis), the Tinman (D. Jerome) and the Lion (Cal Mitchell) — displaying an instant, believable chemistry. They’re each supremely talented at singing, dancing and selling the storyline. Jerome in particular is truly dazzling and displays a stunning amount of personality from a face covered in silver paint.

The costumes from Sharen Davis are a Technicolor delight and director Schele Williams keeps the action moving at a brisk pace, while also allowing numerous moments for choreographer Jaquel Knight’s work to shine.

If you’re looking for an immersive, entertaining, fun and funny show, look no further than “The Wiz.”

‘The Wiz’

When: Through Sunday
Where: Orpheum Theatre, 910 Hennepin Ave. S., Minneapolis
Tickets: $203.10-$70.45 via hennepinarts.org
Capsule: An inventive, colorful take on a familiar tale.