The Wild went back to work Monday at Xcel Energy Center, minus captain Mikko Koivu.

The center has the flu, poor guy. It's going around.

"I guess you'd have to call him questionable at this moment for tomorrow," coach Bruce Boudreau said.

The Wild faces the Calgary Flames at 7 p.m. Tuesday at home before heading to Chicago for another game Wednesday. After a disappointing 7-2 thrashing at the Colorado Avalanche this past Saturday, the Wild has work to do before its bye week next week.

"It was mostly our D zone," forward Charlie Coyle said of what the squad worked on in practice. "We need to be tight and be aware. Sometimes with the goals we've given up , we've been there, we just haven't been looking around and being aware of who's around and who's coming back. Sometimes we over backcheck, and that can be a problem. Just back to basics with simple stuff and going over things to try to create some muscle memory here."

Other than Koivu, winger Nino Niederreiter also skipped out of practice early, just in time to duck out of conditioning. The D-pairs rotated, but I expect the usual there. Here were the lines:

Niederreiter, Coyle, Mikael Granlund
Tyler Ennis , Eric Staal, Zach Parise
Jason Zucker, Joel Eriksson Ek, Chris Stewart
Marcus Foligno, Matt Cullen, Daniel Winnik

Just a quick blog today because I have to jet to Minnesota United for a story there. But I will have a feature on Eric Staal coming at ya later today and then game coverage tomorrow until Sarah picks back up in Chicago!