Mike Yeo takes exception with "anybody that tries to call us soft"

Update: The Wild has recalled Johan Gustafsson to back up Josh Harding tonight. The reason? Rather than ride pine, Darcy Kuemper is slated to start for Iowa against San Antonio.

The Wild held an optional practice today where most the heavy-minute Wild players – Ryan Suter, Zach Parise, Mikko Koivu and Jason Pominville – didn't practice. Nor did Mikael Granlund.

It sounds like Granlund was just kept off the ice as a precaution because he took the Nazem Kadri shot to the head last night. Coach Mike Yeo said, "With those things, you're not in the clear for a couple days here, but we expect him to be fine" and play in Friday's game against the Florida Panthers.

Niklas Backstrom won't dress though. Backstrom took the blow to the head from Kadri, an infraction that cost Kadri a three-game suspension.

Here is former referee Kerry Fraser's take on the Kadri hits and ref responses last night. Good read.

Yeo didn't give a diagnosis for Backstrom, but the Wild will call up Darcy Kuemper or Johan Gustafsson to back up Josh Harding (10-2-2 overall, 8-0 at home) against the Panthers.

I've still been peppered with tweets about the Wild's lack of response last night after Kadri ran Backstrom and I skimmed through the blog comments.

"I'm probably the only coach that took boxing lessons [during the lockout] last year," Yeo quipped.

I asked Yeo about the Wild being called a quote-unquote "soft" team.

"First off, obviously who's the first [player] to jump on top of him [Kadri]?" Yeo said. "[Ryan] Suter. So to say that we didn't do anything, that's false actually. And if you want to get into it, it's this simple really: They've got [Colton] Orr on the bench, they've got [Fraser] McLaren (he actually didn't play, so I'm not positive whom Yeo meant), they've got [Mark Fraser]. They've got one after another. So if we go after Kadri, well, are they going to go after Konopka? No. They're going to go after one of our top guys. They've got more down the line where they can keep playing that game.

"So where we have to be better is on the power play. Teams have to be afraid to pull that crap on us [because] they're fearful of our power play. But at the same time, what I like is that our guys continued to play the game. I'll take exception with anybody that tries to call us soft because that's not true. Where it'd be soft is if they tried to have a physical impact on us. And as far as I'm concerned, we raised our game. And that to me is tough[ness]. It's a different type of tough.

Going back to [Detroit Red Wings GM] Ken Holland speak on the radio when I was listening to one of his interviews at the beginning of the year and he was talking about Detroit in their heyday and what he was saying is in an 82-game season, there's probably going to be five, maybe seven games where you wish you were a little bit tougher. But at the same time, there's a lot of wins along the course of those 82 games that they got because of the makeup of their team. So what's important for us is just to continue to prove that No. 1 that we have each other's back, No. 2 that we're not going to back down, and if teams want to play us physically, then we'll rise to the challenge."

I'd be concerned if the Wild cowered. The Wild instead elevated its game and didn't show any examples of a team that was intimidated by the rough stuff.

They're just not built like Toronto. If you expect Jonas Brodin or Mikael Granlund or even Zach Parise to go in there and mix it up with the Dion Phaneufs and Mark Frasers, you're going to be disappointed. But that's two games against this alleged rough and tumble Maple Leafs that the Wild outplayed the opponent.

Now, will this be a concern later in the year when the Wild plays against the St. Louis Blues and Los Angeles Kings more? We will see. Obviously, the Wild doesn't match up against the Blues from a size standpoint.

"But regardless, the other thing that we were looking at is first off, we were playing an Eastern Conference team, and when you look at the East, the East is made up – and especially that division – is made up different," Yeo said. "We're going through the Western Conference and it's a different complexion of teams. There are a lot of teams that are built very similar to us. Not to get into it too much, but there were games last year --- our goal is pretty simple. We want to be a Cup contending team. And we felt even in the playoffs last year, I felt that there were many games where we played a lot tougher than Chicago but we came away on the bottom end of it. So we have to continue to play tough but there are other parts of our game that we have to make sure we're dictating the game the way that we want to play it."

I asked Matt Cooke about the immediate response to the Kadri on Backstrom thing. Let's be honest: Cooke knows about responses after running the goalie. He's done it a few times in his career.

This isn't the 70s and early 80s anymore. You can't hop the bench anymore. You do, and you get a 10-game suspension the way Toronto's David Clarkson did when John Scott got in Phil Kessel's face.

Responses have to happen in the heat of the moment by the players on the ice, like Jason Zucker fighting a player last night after a dirty hit from behind on Brian Connelly. That was a situation where Zucker reacted to stand up for a teammate after seeing with his very own eyes exactly what a dirty hit it was.

In a situation where Backstrom is run, there is a hockey shift going on. I can promise you that none of the five players on the ice actually saw the forearm shiver to Backstrom's melon from Kadri. Suter got in Kadri's face and knocked him to the ice. If Suter starts pounding away, not only does he negate the ensuing power play, he probably earns more penalty minutes. And I don't think you want your 35-minute defenseman chained to the penalty box and risking even a suspension.

Now later in the game you can say that maybe Kadri should have been challenged. I would have liked to have seen that response, too. Although, the Wild claims Brodziak tried to challenge Kadri to a fight and Kadri wouldn't accept. And you know Zenon Konopka wasn't going to get an affirmative from Kadri.

So to me, this is an overreaction. It was a 0-0 game. If the Wild lost its minds, earned a bunch of penalties and lost the game because of it, I can't imagine the fans freaking over this would be satisfied with that because the Wild stood up for each other. They'd be ticked off because of a loss. I've got no problem whatsoever with what Zucker did. But the other side of it is he negated a power play with the Iowa Wild down 1-0 in an eventual loss. So you've got to pick as fans what you really want? There are no perfect teams. This is how the Wild's built right now. If I was a fan, I'd rather have Brodin moving the puck flawlessly than risking his health by jumping Kadri.

Onward:

I'm doing an article on the third line of Cooke, Brodziak and Justin Fontaine tomorrow. They're going up against top lines and players every night, from the Ovechkins to Kessels, and they're usually coming out of it even or on top at even-strength.

Cooke and Brodziak, the two constant third-liners all year, have been on the ice for two even-strength goals each in the past 12 games. There's some good stuff in tomorrow's article.

-- Konopka, who played seven shifts last night, broke his nose on a Carter Ashton hit. He said it was the 14^th time he broke his nose and he woke up in a pool of blood.

--Zach Parise was getting ribbed for doing the flyby. If you didn't see my article on Parise trying to weed it out, look back in the startribune.com archives from Washington. Parise said it was because it was a tying goal with 4:17 left and it was a reluctant one.