Matt Cooke to appear at NHL headquarters Wednesday afternoon

Wild veteran left wing Matt Cooke will have an in-person hearing Wednesday at 12:30 p.m. ET at NHL headquarters in New York for his knee-on-knee hit that injured Colorado Avalanche defenseman Tyson Barrie in Game 3 of the Western Conference quarterfinals.

Barrie sustained an injury to his left medial collateral ligament and is expected to miss four to six weeks, Avs coach Patrick Roy said.

Cooke, who is unavailable for comment until later this week, faces a suspension that can exceed five games (criteria of in-person hearing). Any suspension can be appealed to Commissioner Gary Bettman after the fact. If Cooke is suspended six or more games, he has the right to appeal Bettman's ruling to a neutral arbitrator.

Cooke, who was assessed a two-minute minor for kneeing, is expected to be represented by agent Pat Morris, an NHLPA representative and Wild GM Chuck Fletcher. The hearing will in front of former defenseman Stephane Quintal, who has taken Brendan Shanahan's role on an interim basis since the discipline czar (so to speak) left for Toronto. Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly is also part of the process.

Quintal and Roy, by the way, were teammates in Montreal briefly.

Since players don't receive salaries in the playoffs, Cooke can only be fined, but he won't lose salary that would come with a regular-season suspension.

It'll be interesting to see the eventual video explanation from the NHL because it's hard to see the difference between Cooke's knee and many in this NHL video showing the difference between suspension-worthy knees, non-suspension worthy knees and those worthy of just a fine. Chicago's Bryan Bickell had a similar knee against St. Louis' Vladimir Sobotka in Game 2 of that playoff series. But Bickell's name isn't Matt Cooke and Sobotka didn't suffer a serious injury.

At the very minimum, Cooke won't play again in the first round. Yeo discussed this likelihood, how his suspension will affect the team and things did get testy when a Denver Post columnist tried to turn Yeo's words upside down like the coach told Cooke to target Avs players.

From the start of this series, Yeo and Roy have made it clear that the gameplan is to finish checks on opposing top players. Before the series even started, Roy himself said the Avs had to make life difficult on players like Ryan Suter and Mikael Granlund and to make sure that if they're going to play big minutes, the minutes better be hard minutes.

Yeo's reaction on the Cooke in-person hearing: "Yeah, obviously things you don't want to have happen. I think we all want to play good, physical, intense hockey. At the same time, I know that they want to do the same to us. Neither side wants to see anyone get hurt. Obviously on our part, we don't want to see one of our players get suspended. Obviously not going to be sitting here and saying we're in a great mood about any of that."

How does it affect lineup? "Today's a day off for players and the rest of the coaches. Obviously I've already started to think about that, but we'll have a chance to get together in the morning and discuss it further."

There are likely three options if one assumes Yeo's not fiddling with Zach Parise-Granlund-Jason Pominville (I'll bet my life on that one) and Matt Moulson-Mikko Koivu-Charlie Coyle.

Haula and Fontaine will obviously stay, so the options would be Nino Niederreiter, Stephane Veilleux or Kyle Brodziak.

Veilleux could probably slide in seamlessly because he's a left wing and let's be honest, that's his role. But my guess is Niederreiter goes there. Niederreiter has played third line for parts of this season, has the size and Yeo has talked a lot the second half about Niederreiter's solid defensive wherewithal. Also, Yeo has said a few times recently that Niederreiter is much better on the left side than the right.

If Niederreiter moves up, either Veilleux would slide into the fourth line or Brodziak would. If that were the case, McCormick would likely move to wing with Dany Heatley, who played well Monday.

Yeo on how much Cooke meant to this team- "He's an important player to our team, there's no question. There's a reason he was brought here and physicality is only a very small part of it really. It's his leadership. It's his experience. It's his role as a penalty killer and a checking forward. So, certainly it's a loss to our lineup. We've been a team that has been able to overcome injuries at different points of the season and at different positions. When you look at some of the guys that we have that are either on a fourth line, or even out of the lineup for that matter, these are guys that have played not only third line but even higher, second or even first-line roles at different situations during the year. So we have guys that we know are capable of coming in and filling that void, and obviously that's going to be an important thing for our team to get adjusted to quickly."

Was this the risk in signing Cooke? Like I told you on last night's blog, I can provide countless examples every game where Cooke has shown he's a different player than yesteryear. He normally errs on the side of caution whenever somebody's in a vulnerable position, doesn't have the puck or has a chance to be blown up. The stats and his off-ice video work have shown he has reformed (no major penalties since 2011, and ...

"I don't really want to get into that," Yeo said. "Obviously, listen, I had the experience of working with Cookie when I was in Pittsburgh and there was a history before he came to Pittsburgh. And he was a real important part of our team, a real good person on and off the ice and helped our team win a championship. So, for me, I was looking at what he did then. I looked at, Chuck obviously as well, looked at the way that he's been able to change his game since a couple of the things that happened, and that was kind of our focus."

Does Cooke represent the league well? Yeo: "I'm not going to get into that. Listen, you're asking me to sit here and criticize my player. I'm not going to do that. I don't want to get into a whole laundry list of things trying to defend him. This is a situation that happened in the game last night and I believe the league is going to handle this. They always do and they've obviously looked at it very carefully."

Cooke's absence pretty big on that third line? Yeo: "First off, like I said, he was part of that matchup line. But I do believe that we have other guys that are capable of filling that void. Again, this is a tough loss for us, but I know that's a tough loss for them and I'm sure they're not going to sit around and feel sorry for themselves. They're going to try to find guys that can fill the void, and that's been a team that's been able to overcome injuries this year, and we've been a team that's been able to overcome injuries, and that's part of what the playoffs is about, dealing with different types of adversities that come your way. So that's the challenge.

"These are things that we'll discuss. I thought that Fontaine was a nice complement to that line so I don't expect to make any changes there, and obviously part of the reason that Haulzy was there was his speed. So you can expect to see that line stay the same. But where we go from there, I'm not exactly sure yet, and certainly we have a few ideas, but we'll hammer that out a little bit more in the morning."

Do your skill guys need to be more on guard?

Denver Post columnist: So you wanted Cooke to target specific guys? Yeo: "Don't get into this, alright? I know where you want to spin this. But listen, I want our players when somebody is in front of them to finish their check. That's hockey. So if you think that I'm saying, 'Go take him out.' No, you're wrong. There's a lot more respect in this game than that and we have a lot more respect for the game than that. So what we say to our guys is if you have an opportunity to finish your check, finish your check. And that's the same thing that I'm sure that they're saying there, too.

What's Cooke been like in the locker room? Yeo: "I would say that he's been great for us. I'm not sure that he's got a charging or a major or boarding penalty this year, I'm not sure. But more importantly he's been an important leader to our group. We've got a lot of young kids on this team, and I think he's done a real good job helping these kids become pros and helping these guys ride the ups and downs of the season. Certainly, in playoff time, if you look at the adversity that we faced in Game 1 and how things went in Game 2, he was a guy that helped us regroup and get reset and refocused for this past game."

The unfortunate part of today is it was mostly a follow on the Cooke-Barrie incident, not Mikael Granlund's overtime thrilling goal or Darcy Kuemper's shutout. Kuemper will obviously start Game 4. Ryan Wilson will replace Barrie in Colorado's lineup. More on that in Wednesday's Star Tribune.

From Elias: Mikael Granlund's first NHL playoff goal earned the Wild a 1-0 overtime victory in Game 3 of its series against the Avalanche. Granlund is only the fifth NHL player in the last 75 years to score his first career playoff goal in a 1-0 overtime game. The others were Andrei Zyuzin (1998), Ruslan Fedotenko (2002), Niko Dimitrakos (2004) and Ryan O'Reilly (2010).

From Elias: Darcy Kuemper, making the first playoff start of his NHL career, recorded 22 saves in his 1-0 overtime victory against the Avalanche on Monday night. Kuemper is only the second goaltender in NHL history to post a 1-0 overtime win in his first postseason start. The first was the Red Wings' Normie Smith, whose first playoff start came in what is still the longest playoff game in NHL history, Detroit's 1-0 victory over the Montreal Maroons on March 24, 1936, which Smith won when Mud Bruneteau scored at the 16:30 mark of the sixth overtime period.

--Regarding the Wild playing so well at home last night:
This conference is so good. Looking at one stat today, 0-11 on the road. Is that a surprise? No. This is how this conference is. You have to work hard to be part of the playoffs. You had to win big games. It was not an easy ride to be part of the playoffs. Every team had to be good at home, every team had to win big games along the way, every team had to bring their game to another level. That's what (the Wild) did yesterday. They had great urgency. All the series right now are 2-1 for the team who started at home except for San Jose who plays the third game tonight.

--On the Granlund goal:
He made a super play on that goal. We don't try to be overphysical with him. We didn't get beat by a bad goal. We got beat by an outstanding play. He made a terrific play in the corner and even better to the front of the net. We have 2 guys in front of the net. He went through these guys. He deserves credit for that, for the quality of his play.

--Regarding the power play, particularly in Barrie's absence:
I'm not saying were gonna change a lot of things, but there's options. PA could go back to the point. The player we called up today, Joey Hishon, he's been playing really well on the power play in the minors, he's a guy that could also step in on the power play.

I think we're gonna simplify our power play. That's the first thing. We need to put more pucks on net, that's the thing we haven't done. We have to put pucks on net, have a bit more screen and we'll see what happens. This is how Suter scored his goal in Game 1, a wrister that deflected on us and went in the back of the net. Sometimes it doesn't have to be pretty. It's put pucks on net and compete in front of the net. I thought yesterday our 5 on 5 game, this is what we didn't do as well. We didn't go to the net as much, working on rebounds and putting some shots on net. Our shots just didn't get through and we're gonna have to do that.

Minny's playing well on the penalty killing. They're doing a good job putting some pressure on us. You see they're sending their two D into the corner, putting a lot of pressure on us. For some reason right now we just couldn't find the opening, and create some scoring chances, and when we do have some chances, their goalies I thought made some good saves. Sometimes, it's just one power play and then things start clicking and that puts pressure on the other team. Jamie had a real good chance in the second period, if you score on that one after the Cooke penalty, I think that could have made them more on their heels. And that's what were gonna have to do. For some reason when we're skating, they're getting on their heels. Yesterday we didn't skate as well and they responded well.