Only three Wild regulars, lots of roster hopefuls playing tonight in Winnipeg

UPDATED

The Wild (1-1 in the preseason) visits Winnipeg tonight at 7. The game can be seen on NHL Network and heard on KFAN (100.3-FM).

Darcy Kuemper, whom I wrote about in today's paper here, will start with Alex Stalock backing up.

Erik Haula is the lone World Cup returnee making his exhibition debut.

Others in the lineup include roster hopefuls Joel Eriksson Ek, Tyler Graovac, Zac Dalpe, Kurtis Gabriel, Alex Tuch, Christoph Bertschy, Mike Reilly, Ryan Carter and Jordan Schroeder.

"I'd just like to see them playing the right way," coach Bruce Boudreau said. "This was our seventh practice. Now granted, I would say, not everybody's practiced seven times. We should be starting to get down the things we want to do. When we reviewed the tape from the last game, we were just all over the place in the neutral zone, all over the place on the forecheck, and when you're doing that, you're not going to keep the puck in and when you're doing that you're playing slow and when you're doing that you're not getting any shots on goal.

"This is the third look we have on some guys and I think it's important that they make the positive impression on us."

Zach Parise, Ryan Suter, Mikko Koivu and Mikael Granlund are expected to make their preseason debuts Sunday against Carolina.

The Wild worked on the power play a ton today. It was a little deceiving because Nino Niederreiter's not in camp yet and Dumba and Reilly didn't have to practice this morning, but Boudreau used the Parise-Eric Staal-Charlie Coyle line and Granlund-Koivu-Chris Stewart lines as the Nos. 1 and 2 units, so those could be the units vs. the Canes.

The pointmen, respectively, were Jared Spurgeon-Suter and Jonas Brodin-Christian Folin.

Boudreau basically said after practice that he plans to use four defensemen on the points IF Reilly makes the team, so Reilly and Dumba as the other D besides Spurgeon and Suter. If Reilly doesn't make the team, one of the pointmen will probably be a forward like Granlund or Jason Pominville, I'd guess.

I am not covering tonight's game, by the way. I'll cover the remaining three exhibition games.

In tomorrow's paper, a feature on new Iowa coach Derek Lalonde and his hope to turn around what has been a losing team the past three years.

In the next few days, I'll write about Scott Stevens' influence already on the defensemen. For the first time that I can remember, it was an assistant coach stopping practice today to bark at guys and instruct. Boudreau said he wants that from every assistant.

"I can't be the only voice that they hear on a negative notion," Boudreau said.

Stevens was not happy with the losing goal the other night where Spurgeon and Brodin let Rene Bourque get behind them. Like I said, I'll write more about this in the next few days.