Dusty Niklas Backstrom just trying to be a good teammate; Yeo talks about scratching Christian Folin

Devan Dubnyk vs. Semyon Varlamov tonight at Xcel Energy Center when the Wild, looking for its first five-game winning streak this season, and Avalanche renew their rivalry of last year's playoffs. If you didn't see my main article today, here is a story on Zach Parise talking about his play and the team's play since the death of his father.

Dubnyk will make his ninth straight start for the Wild since his Jan. 14 acquisition. Varlamov will make his ninth straight start and 17^th in the past 18 games for the Avs. He is 9-5-2 with a 2.10 goals-against average and .934 save percentage in that stretch.

Dubnyk is 6-1 with a 1.48 goals-against average and .943 save percentage. He has allowed three goals in four straight regulation wins since the All-Star break and has three shutouts in eight starts with Minnesota.

Darcy Kuemper will make his final conditioning stint start for Iowa this afternoon at 3 p.m. ET in Toronto. He made 23 saves in a 5-3 win at Hamilton last night. He'll then fly back to Des Moines with the Baby Wild and is expected to get his stuff and be at the morning skate in Minnesota on Monday morning.

Even with the conditioning stint, he has counted against the Wild's cap and 23-man roster, so when Kuemper returns, the Wild will continue to go with three goalies. Niklas Backstrom hasn't played since giving up six goals in a 7-2 loss at Pittsburgh on Jan. 13. He was even a healthy scratch in Detroit for the first time in his career.

I talked to Backstrom, the Wild's all-time winningest goalie with 194 wins and 28 shutouts, this morning and he admits, "For sure it's weird, but at the end of the day, it is what it is. You can't really do anything about it. You just live with it."

Coach Mike Yeo has said a million times that he right now has no plan for how to manage three goalies. There's only two nets in practice and one in games (so to speak).

"I don't know," Backstrom said when I asked if he has talked to GM Chuck Fletcher or Yeo. "They haven't told me anything. I have no idea. Maybe I need to start to read what you guys write so I know what's going on here."

He said that with a big laugh, and if you know Backstrom, he wasn't being a jerk. He just doesn't know.

He has a no-move clause, so he can't technically be placed on waivers as far as what I understand and be sent to the minors. Conditioning stints though can usually be finagled, so I asked him if he would ever accept a conditioning stint just to play games like Kuemper did (if Fletcher asked).

Backstrom said, "I don't know. No one has really said anything, so it's hard to pretty much have an opinion and know what the options are. So it's hard to say anything."

I have known Backstrom for nine years. He is such a good person and as intelligent a person as I've ever met, so he has to know this could be the beginning of the end for his tenure in Minnesota. It seems very plausible that the Wild will have to buy him out of the final year of his contract this summer ($3.416 million). He turns 37 on Friday.

One thing that has been clear has been how good of a teammate he has been to Dubnyk. He's a pro and says he's not about to create problems.

"We're a team here," Backstrom said. "It's never one guy. It's never two guys. It's always a team. Team wins, team loses, and that's how you try to live when you play and that's how you try to live when you don't play. It's always team first. It's not about throwing somebody under the bus or doing something stupid. It's about the players in here taking care of each other and that's what we take pride of in this group. We're a wolf pack. Somebody messes with one guy, the other guy steps in and defends them. It's inside the rink, it's outside the rink. That's how a team works and that's how it gets stronger."

Avs are 3-1-1 in their past five, 9-4-3 in their past 16.

They have changed the way they've played the past few months. Gone is that rarely-used man-on-man defensive-zone coverage that the Wild used and abused in last year's playoffs and the first two games of this season.

"They've played better over the last couple months here and we've finally got back to playing the way we're capable of playing," defenseman Ryan Suter, a plus-6 the past five games, said. "They've changed the way they've played. Before, you could do those cutbacks on guys and get to 2-on-1 guys down low and I think they've changed that because it might not have been working the way they wanted it to."

Just remember Game 2 of this season when the Wild won 3-0 in Denver. That pace was insane for a second game of a season and the Wild overcame a bogus disallowed goal and got some sensational saves from Kuemper before DU product Jason Zucker scored a huge goal to make it 2-0 when Kuemper was getting bombarded.

But those two games (Wild outscored Colorado 8-zip in Games 1 and 2 this season) were so long ago, Yeo said it has no bearing on tonight. He said what should make it intense is that Colorado in 9^th and the Wild is 10^th in the conference with the Wild a point behind the Avs.

The Avs are a resilient team, having scored tying goals with an extra attacker in the four of the past seven games. If you remember, the Avs did that in two games to the Wild in last year's playoffs.

Going into the last game against Detroit, the Avs were 0 for 20 on the power play but 4 for 4 on 6-on-5's with Varlamov on the bench.

That's nuts.

Iginla, who has the second-most goals among active NHLers, is one goal from tying Mark Recchi for 19^th all-time (577).

Justin Fontaine (groin) won't play tonight.

Rookie Christian Folin will be scratched a fourth straight game. That's becoming more of a topic, but Yeo is hesitant to fiddle with a lineup that has won four straight.

The Wild has long needed a left-shot D in my opinion but has yet to trade for one. Yeo doesn't want to have rookies Matt Dumba or Folin, two right-shots, play the left side. Nate Prosser has played well the past four or five games on the left side, which is ironic considering one reason Yeo gave often last season when scratching Prosser was that he couldn't play the left side.

Folin turns 24 on Monday, so this isn't like some 20-year-old rookie sitting every night. And Yeo said this morning there are still benefits to Folin, whom I think is going to be a quality player for this team, practicing here in Minnesota as opposed to playing in Iowa.

Yeo also told me when I had him on KFAN the other day that this is a crucial point of the season, the Wild needs win and nobody deserves to come out of the lineup and who knows what lineup the Wild will use two days from now.

He also wants to keep Folin here as opposed to Iowa because "it prevents Dums from having that sense of security. He knows that there's a guy lurking and waiting to get back in the lineup."

But Yeo said he'll continue to discuss this with Fletcher. As Fletcher always says, the lineup on a nightly basis is completely up to Yeo and the coaching staff.