The Wild take on the Los Angeles Kings tonight on the west coast, and news flooded the Minnesota wires leading up to the game.
Firstly, Darcy Kuemper will make his second start of the season in net for Minnesota against the Kings, with Josh Harding still on injured reserve with an undisclosed illness, and Niklas Backstrom suffering from abdominal stiffness.
Backstrom did practice today, but did not yesterday for a a reason the team would only term “maintenance”.
Kuemper has allowed six goals on 16 shots this year, making for an outlandish 6.13 goals goals against average on the season.
In other Wild notes, defenseman Matt Dumba, who appeared in 13 games for Minnesota this year, has been loaned to the Portland Winterhawks of the 22-team Western Hockey League for the remainder of the year.
The WHL, a prominently Canadian, junior hockey league, is likely to contend in the postseason, which would benefit the development of Dumba and was one of the main reasons for the move.
He was averaging under 13 minutes per game with Minnesota, one of the lowest marks in all of the NHL.
With those two notes out of the way, a bit of good news for the Wild coming in the form of Olympic rosters.
The Xcel Energy Center dwellers feature five Olympians: Zach Parise and Ryan Suter were named to the U.S. roster last week, while Nino Niederreiter was named to the Swiss roster yesterday, and Mikko Koivu and Mikael Granlund were named to Finland’s roster today.
As for defenseman Jonas Brodin, who was named to the NHL’s All-Rookie team last year, he may hear his name called at some point in the near future as well, and he’s preparing as if he will be in Sochi.
Brodin says if somebody gets hurt, he'll be ready to step in for Sweden. He says he's known for a week he didn't make it #mnwild
— Michael Russo (@RussoHockey) January 7, 2014
The Wild start their three-week Olympic break Feb. 6.
