Wild updates: Ryan Suter sick, Matt Cooke progressing, Outdoor game chatter, Star Tribune Guys Night Out and much more

Note: The Wild has recalled rookie Christian Folin from Iowa. It gives the team insurance in case Ryan Suter can't play. But assistant GM Brent Flahr talked this morning about how well Folin has been playing in Iowa ("He's close to being NHL ready.")

Afternoon from the press room at Xcel Energy Center, where the Montreal Canadiens just got done practice.

Wild and the Habs on Wednesday at 6 p.m. due to the game being Canada's national game on Sportsnet.

Darcy Kuemper vs. Carey Price. Defenseman Ryan Suter didn't practice for the Wild today because he's sick. Coach Mike Yeo said he's feeling better today than yesterday: "We're expecting, he says he should be OK for tomorrow."

Yeo said it's not the mumps: "No swollen jaw," he said, before adding kiddingly, "He is a defenseman though, so we should be careful."

Wild defensemen Jonas Brodin, Marco Scandella, Keith Ballard and Christian Folin have had the mumps or mumps-like symptoms. No forwards or goalies though.

I mentioned the other night how I was planning to write a big Scandella piece in Wednesday's paper. Well, kinda sorta. Scandella was such an awesome interview that I'm going to hold the big personality profile stuff until I get a little more space and we can play it up bigger in the paper. You'll get a real good sense of what Scandella is like away from the rink in that piece. It'll feature his life growing up and off-the-ice interests.

So Wednesday's story will concentrate mostly on Scandella on the ice and that next Scandella story will run hopefully in the next week or so.

What else?

Kuemper has been pulled in his past two home starts, but with Kuemper coming off a huge third period in Dallas and Niklas Backstrom playing well in Saturday's shootout loss to St. Louis, Yeo said it wasn't an easy decision choosing Wednesday's starter.

"I don't know if we could have made a bad decision for tomorrow's game," said Yeo, before joking that we'd actually know if that was true after the game.

Twenty-three games into the season, the Wild now enters a stretch with some breathing room in the schedule and the ability to get some good practice time in.

A lot of words there, but basically Yeo says the Wild has been OK and now with a little more practice time and spread out games, this is the opportunity he wants to see his team start to not only win games, but get back to the start of the year where it was playing great hockey on the ice and dominating games again.

What else?

Cody Almond tweeted yesterday that he was glad to be back in Geneva, and the Wild officially announced today that it loaned him back to his Swiss team. Almond returned to the Wild this past offseason with the hope of proving he can play full-time in the NHL. He didn't make the team, and with the Wild unable to trade him, he no longer wanted to play in Iowa. So he returns to Switzerland and the Wild still owns his rights. Technically, it can even recall him, although my guess is the chances of that are slim to absolutely none.

Matt Cooke, who is sick now, skated on his own today and the hope is he'll get on the ice with his teammates for the first time Wednesday during its morning skate. He has missed 15 games since Oct. 28 with a hip flexor that just didn't respond off the ice quickly. He was playing on it since Game 2 of the season in Denver. As Yeo as said many times lately, the Wild has badly missed Cooke from a penalty-killing perspective, energy perspective and physicality perspective.

"He's starting to step it up a little bit," Yeo said. "We'll see where this goes. I think we'll have a little better idea in the next couple days as far as how much he pushes and how much it responds."

I asked if the coaches had any words of wisdom for him, maybe with, say, the power play, and Yeo said, "That always seems to come up, yup. I didn't open up the floor to recommendations, I opened it up to questions."

Wild 2014 first-round pick Alex Tuch (Boston College) was selected to USA Hockey's preliminary roster for the upcoming world junior championships.

The Star Tribune Guys Night Out #2 is prior to Wednesday (nobody told me about #1, so have no clue who conducted that one). Wednesday's event sold out to 300 very, very, very smart people.

Wes Walz and I will be chatting it up prior to the game with these gents. Basically a Q and A, then a Chalk Talk where Walz will diagram how to work the penalty kill and I'll diagram how to tweet and write blogs.

Tickets are still available for Star Tribune Guys Night Out #3 on Thursday, February 12, when the Wild hosts the Florida Panthers (America's team) at 7 p.m. Chalk Talk is scheduled from 5:45 p.m.– 6:30 p.m. and will feature Jack Carlson, Bill Butters, Steve Payne and Brad Maxwell.

Lastly, Commissioner Gary Bettman, whose league became $100,000 richer today thanks to the Los Angeles Kings stupidly allowing suspended Slava Voynov (has pled not guilty to felony domestic violence) to practice today, will be at Wednesday's game.

Bettman will be in town for Thursday's soldout United States Hall of Fame induction of Karyn Bye Dietz, Brian Rafalski, Jeff Sauer and Lou Vairo. ESPN's Steve Levy is the Master of Ceremonies.

The evening's festivities will also include the presentation of the Lester Patrick Trophy to NHL Deputy Commission Bill Daly and St. Paul's own Paul Holmgren. In addition, Bob O'Connor will receive the USA Hockey Builders Award. Full coverage of the 2014 U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame Induction Celebration will be available online at ushockeyhalloffame.com.

I just realized I never ran this in the paper, but when I sat down with Daly in New York last month, I talked to him about Minnesota getting a stadium-series game.

"I think the chances are good for a stadium-series game next year," Daly said. "In a perfect world, everyone would love a Winter Classic. I'm certainly not ruling them out long-term. But, I think if that's Craig [Leipold's] ultimate goal, he might have to wait a little longer. So I'm not sure he wouldn't be happy with a stadium-series game and then maybe a Winter Classic down the road.
"I don't want to be too strong on it that a stadium-series game will happen next year, but yes, I think so. Let's put it this way: There's an outdoor game in Minnesota's future."