Brett Sutter to make Wild debut, Darcy Kuemper to start vs. the Keithless Blackhawks

The Wild completes its three-game roadie tonight at Chicago (7:30 p.m.) before opening a four-game homestand (separated by the NHL's annual Christmas hiatus) tomorrow night against the Boston Bruins.

The Wild is 3-5-1 in its past nine regular-season games at Chicago but 0-6 at Chicago in the past two postseasons.

The Wild is 6-0-1 against the Central Division, but it has yet to play the Blackhawks or Nashville, which comes to town Saturday. The Wild is 0-4-1 against powerhouses Anaheim, Los Angeles and St. Louis and as Zach Parise said to me in a Dec. 7 story here, it's time for the Wild to join the top tier.

"We've got to start beating some of these teams," Parise said.

Afternoon from the United Center, where the Wild just had an optional skate. If you didn't see my feature today, I did a story on the Wild's emergency medical action plan, which you may have witnessed one week ago when Keith Ballard was hit from behind. Here's that link.

If the Wild wins tonight, it'll be 8-8 on the road. Remember, this is a team that began the season 2-6 on the road. It's a good sign that the Wild is winning games on the road because one must assume it'll start to improve its home play again. The Wild is 2-2-1 in its past five at home after starting the season 7-1 at home.

Minnesota catches a big break tonight because coach Joel Quenneville says Duncan Keith, who ranks sixth in the NHL in average ice time per game (25:53), will miss the game because he is sick. Keith has 18 points and is plus-10 and scrambles up the Blackhawks' blue line to potentially Tim Erixon-Brent Seabrook; Johnny Oduya-Niklas Hjalmarsson; David Rundblad-Michal Rozsival.

The Wild, which has had five defensemen come down with the mumps, actually has player visits scheduled for a children's hospital in the Twin Cities on Monday and has been talking to the hospital to see if it should go on as scheduled or be postponed.

Better be safe than sorry. The Wild hopes it's beyond the whole mumps that seems to have begun with the St. Louis Blues (whether they're willing to admit it or not, more than a dozen players, staff and, uh, media came down with mumps-like symptoms) and Wild. The Wild has taken all sorts of precautions from boosters (them and the Iowa Wild) a month ago to decontaminating its locker-room and equipment to making sure players use separate towels and water bottles.

As of now, the Wild still says Jared Spurgeon will miss his second game tonight due to a stomach ailment, but I'll ask Mike Yeo again during his 5:30 availability tonight. Again, since the first seven games of the season, the Wild's top-4 of Ryan Suter, Jonas Brodin, Marco Scandella and Spurgeon has played in the same game in three of 22 games.

Antti Raanta vs. Darcy Kuemper tonight. I was shooting the breeze with Kuemper this morning and we were talking about how much water weight goalies lose per NHL game. I knew I should have been a goalie. He told me his record in one game was losing 10 pounds!

You should see how much water Niklas Backstrom drinks between periods.

(I'm making that up).

Mikael Granlund told me he is playing tonight after missing Monday's practice.

Wearing No. 27, Brett Sutter will make his Wild debut for Ryan Carter, who is out with an upper-body injury. Sutter, whose father is Los Angeles Kings coach Darryl Sutter, will play his 55^th NHL game over parts of seven seasons.

The former Calgary Flame and Carolina Hurricane will play his second game in Chicago, which is neat because his dad spent his entire NHL playing career for the Blackhawks and coached the Blackhawks. Brett Sutter lived in Chicago as a kid and grew up a big Blackhawks fan.

"My dad's history playing here and coaching here, it's exciting," Sutter, 27, said. "They were kind of my childhood team growing up here, so it's definitely neat. But at the same time, once you get out there, it's just another game. You try to put that aside and just play."

He said it won't make a difference what position he plays tonight.

"I'm just going to try to be a real hard-working player," Sutter, the former Charlotte Checkers captain, said. "I'm going to win every battle I can and keep it real simple tonight and just play a heavy game, be physical and do what I can to help the team."

Yup, he's a Sutter Brother's son.

We chatted with Sutter about the Iowa coaching change, too, and you can read about that in tomorrow's paper.

Scandella returns from his two-game jail sentence tonight. He said he's not a dirty player, but he has to learn from the two recent head shots.