Training Camp Groups Revealed

Prior to this morning’s training camp scrimmage between Team A and Team B, the Minnesota Wild PR Twitter account revealed the lineup for the three training camp teams as the on-ice portion of camp opens today.

Here are your training camp rosters:

Team A
Zach Parise – Mikael Granlund – Jason Pominville
Matt Cooke – Erik Haula – Nino Niederreiter
Curt Gogol – Brett Sutter – Kurtis Gabriel
Chase Lang

Keith Ballard – Christian Folin
Gustav Olofsson – Matt Dumba
Alex Gudbranson

John Curry
Brandon Whitney

Team B
Thomas Vanek – Mikko Koivu – Charlie Coyle
Stephane Veilleux – Cody Almond – Brett Bulmer
Ryan Walters – Brady Brassart – Joel Rechlicz
Reid Duke

Ryan Suter – Jonas Brodin
Justin Falk – Jonathon Blum
Corbin Baldwin – Tanner Faith

Niklas Backstrom
Alexandre Belanger

Team C
Jason Zucker – Kyle Brodziak – Justin Fontaine
Michael Keranen – Jordan Schroeder – Zack Mitchell
Raphael Bussieres – Tyler Graovac – Zack Phillips
Pavel Jenys – Ryan Graham

Marco Scandella – Jared Spurgeon
Dylan Labbe – Stu Bickell
Colton Jobke – Hunter Warner

Ilya Bryzgalov
Johan Gustafsson

We’ll have a recap of Day 1 of camp later today, but just looking at the teams we can pull out a sense of what the team may be thinking for the opening night lineup, at least if we keep the lines in tact, which they almost certainly won’t.

Parise – Granlund – Pominville
Vanek – Koivu – Coyle
Cooke – Haula – Niederreiter
Zucker – Brodziak – Fontaine

Suter – Brodin
Scandella – Spurgeon
Ballard – Folin

That will change, but if I were to guess at an opening night roster and had to keep lines in tact, there it is.

There are also a few surprises here that are worth noting. Darcy Kuemper is absent from the list because he is not yet at camp, after signing a two-year deal last night. Zack Parise had a few words about Kuemper not being there that we’ll include in the Day 1 wrap-up later today.

Guillaume Gélinas is hurt and not participating in camp yet. That’s unfortunate for him as it’s his first camp.

The D pairings are both surprising and not. They’re surprising in how closely they hew to what we saw last year before Jonas Brodin started getting split up from Ryan Suter a little more often.

Again, surprising and not surprising is Zack Phillips placement, which may really mean nothing, but he was once considered a top prospect and is on the third line of Team C with Raphael Bussieres and Tyler Graovac. That puts him under a few young players that seems to indicate that management is a little more interested in some other guys.

The other notable bit here is that christian Folin is playing with Keith Ballard, a defenseman who is definitely on the NHL roster. The team may switch it up daily since they have placed Matt Dumba, Gustav Olofsson, and Folin on the same team, making it easy to move them around and get a look at all three of them in similar situations, but it may indicate that they’re leaning toward Folin for the vacant 6/7 spot on D.