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Wild and Blues battling illness

Minnesota Wild v Dallas Stars

DALLAS, TX - MARCH 08:Keith Ballard #2 of the Minnesota Wild stick handles against the Dallas Stars on March 8, 2014 at American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas. Dallas won 4-3. (Photo by Thomas B. Shea/Getty Images)

Thomas B. Shea

They may be rivals on the ice, but the Minnesota Wild and St. Louis Blues’ staffs are sharing notes when it comes to battling an illness going through their respective dressing rooms.

According to Michael Russo of the Star Tribune, Wild defensemen Keith Ballard and Christian Folin have been sidelined by a similar illness, which went through the Blues dressing room all week.

Symptoms included fatigue, shivering, body aches and swollen jaws.

“It starts with one person, and then it’s passed very quickly through water bottles, or a towel, or whatever, the shower floor,” said Blues coach Ken Hitchcock. “It just goes … zipping through your team.”

What was originally believed to be a case of the flu now appears to be a virus of some sort.

Ballard and Folin, who skated with the team Saturday morning, were sent to hospital for blood blood work and will not accompany the team on an upcoming two game road trip to New York and Boston.

Both Wild players have been placed on antibiotics.

“We shouldn’t be contagious,” Ballard said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but it was awful.”

Russo notes a similarity between the two hockey clubs as they were both in Southern California last week and used the same visiting dressing rooms in L.A. and Anaheim.

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