Rugged veteran forward Mike Rupp will play his first NHL game since May 9's playoff game against the Chicago Blackhawks tonight when the Wild visits the St. Louis Blues.
Rupp, coming off a five-game conditioning stint with AHL Iowa as the final step in his recoup from offseason knee surgery, draws into the lineup because center Mikael Granlund will miss his second game in a row with an upper-body injury.
Coach Mike Yeo says from what he's "been told, we don't have reason to be concerned. We're just calling him day-to-day and we'll see what happens here tomorrow."
Yeo is being hush-hush about what the issue with Granlund is. Like I wrote on yesterday's blog, he played four games since the Nazem Kadri head shot but was hammered by Marc Methot last Wednesday in Ottawa.
Whatever the injury is, the Wild is clearly thinking there's a chance Granlund could play Wednesday against Phoenix because if he was already ruled out for that game, the Wild could simply place Granlund on injured reserve retroactive to last Wednesday and call up a forward to replace him. Instead, the Wild is keeping Granlund off IR, which would allow him to play Wednesday if he can.
Torrey Mitchell has been placed on IR (he can come off whenever he's healthy) and that move allows Darcy Kuemper to back up tonight. Josh Harding was not able to return to St. Louis because of a stiff hamstring that was apparently spasming in Winnipeg.
Apparently, it's a similar injury to why he had to come out of the Carolina game Oct. 24. Niklas Backstrom played the third period of that game and then consecutive games against Chicago.
Harding's had some awful luck in this building anyway. He strained his groin here in 2005, which thrust Backstrom onto the NHL stage initially. He tore his ACL and MCL here in his preseason debut in 2010. He also got sick in a tie game here in the preseason. Johan Gustafsson proceeded to come in and the Wild got shellacked in the third.
