Lineup For First Wild Preseason Game Revealed

The Minnesota Wild have revealed the lineup for their first preseason game, taking place Monday, September 21 at 7pm CST in Winnipeg.

The lineup isn’t broken out into lines and appears in the photo from Wild.com like this:

Forwards
Nino Niederreiter
Charlie Coyle
Justin Fontaine
Jason Zucker
Tyler Graovac
Jordan Schroeder
Michael Keranen
Cody Almond
Brett Bulmer
Curt Gogol
Brett Sutter
Kurtis Gabriel
Zack Mitchell

Defense
Gustav Olofsson
Stu Bickel
Justin Falk
Jonathon Blum
Keith Ballard
Christian Folin
Dylan Labbe

Goalies
Niklas Backstrom
Ilya Bryzgalov

This game was expected to feature a lot of prospects as the early preseason games often do. Interestingly, Mike Yeo has been quoted as saying that he plans to play more of the regular starters in the following five preseason games because of how the team has gotten off to a slow start during his tenure. He hopes that increased game situation time for the starters will help them be at game speed and intensity to start the season.

That means there will be fewer opportunities for prospects to try and crack the lineup and likely means that the prospects who are not playing in this game will not be getting many more opportunities to impress and find an unexpected spot on the opening night lineup.

The prospects not listed here include forwards Chase Lang, Ryan Walters, Brady Brassart, Joel Rechlicz, Reid Duke, Raphael Bussieres, Zack Phillips, Pavel Jenys, and Ryan Graham, and defenseman Alex Gudbranson, Corbin Baldwin, Tanner Faith, Colton Jobke, and Hunter Warner.

One notable omission is Matt Dumba, which is odd considering that a veteran like Keith Ballard is a bit of a surprise in this early lineup. You have to expect that Dumba will be in the lineup for some subsequent games, but with much discussion around which rookie defenseman may make the opening night lineup, it’s a surprise to me to see Christian Folin and Gustav Olofsson in this lineup and not Dumba, simply because you expect the team to be comparing them some.

However, it’s plenty early and while it’s noteworthy, it doesn’t necessarily mean any one thing in particular.

Also notable are the goaltenders. Notable, but not surprising. Niklas Backstrom had been expected to start if for no other reason than he’s the only goaltender seriously competing for the starting job who has been at every day of camp and was a part of captain’s practice before that. He’ll be splitting time tomorrow with Ilya Bryzgalov.

Darcy Kuemper is certainly expected to see some starting time during the preseason — in fact Mike Yeo said that he had initially planned to have Kuemper start Monday’s game — but after being thrown into yesterday’s scrimmage without any practice, he’ll probably get a little more practice in before they try to get a good look at his progress and where he’s at before the start of the season.

As Chad Graff noted in a piece on Kuemper, he’s been training, but with most NHL players taking off from his training center a couple weeks ago to join their teams, Kuemper hasn’t had the pace and competition he’s now facing in recent workouts. He’s been working out though and it sounds like his conditioning is in a good place. Just needs to get used to the pace again.

One last note on the lineup: It appears that in this game Yeo will give Charlie Coyle a look at center instead of wing.

It’s dangerous to read too much into a preseason move, but this one is curious. If Coyle looks good and the team wants to give him a shot at center, what do they do with Erik Haula? Move him to wing with Coyle? Move him to the fourth line? Move him to the second line where Coyle was? It’s a move that would change a lot with the projected depth chart. It’ll be interesting to see if that experiment lasts once guys like Parise, Pominville, Vanek, and Koivu are in the lineup.

You can listen to the game live on KFAN (100.3 FM) or through KFAN online at I Heart Radio.