Mike Yeo explains the Wild's potential new lines and more

Again, the news of the day:

-- Judging by today's potential lines for Friday's game against Montreal, Zach Parise and Mikko Koivu will be split for the first time under coach Mike Yeo. This is an attempt to get more 5-on-5 scoring throughout the lineup and create three scoring lines. Parise and Koivu have each registered four even-strength points in 13 games.

-- Charlie Coyle will return Friday after missing 11 games from a sprained knee.

-- Keith Ballard will likely return Friday

-- Jonas Brodin practiced today and is questionable Friday. The Wild doesn't want to put him in a bad spot with his broken cheekbone. He says he felt good today, so we will find out Thursday if he's back on his regular pair with Ryan Suter. Today he skated with Matt Dumba, who will be a healthy scratch Friday. Brodin is sporting a full face shield as opposed to the cage. He didn't like the cage. His face is looking better than it was when originally clocked by that puck.

-- No goalie decision for Friday, but if Josh Harding is healthy, it'd be surprising if he doesn't return to the cage (eight goals in nine games vs. Niklas Backstrom's 3.42 goals-against average and .871 save percentage in six appearances.

-- Stephane Veilleux is on waivers and will be assigned to Iowa if he clears Thursday.

-- Just an fyi: Rachel Blount will be covering the Wild for us Thursday, Friday vs. Montreal, Saturday and Sunday morning. I'm in a wedding out of town and will return to cover Zach Parise's first game against New Jersey on Sunday.

-- If you didn't get to read, here's my fun profile on Zenon Konopka and his wine label/bunny rabbit. Good pics, too.

Here are the lines and D pairs again. The big thing is the Wild's not going with the conventional top-3 lines. Koivu is not on the "third line" if I didn't make that clear on original blog. The Koivu/Coyle lines should be 1/2 or 2/1 in ice time still. The way things have gone all season, Koivu's and Kyle Brodziak's lines always lead in ice time. The "second line" centered by Mikael Granlund is usually third in ice time.

Parise-Coyle-Heatley/Fontaine

Nino Niederreiter-Koivu-Brodziak

Fontaine/Heatley-Zenon Konopka-Torrey Mitchell

Mike Rupp is being rotated into line rushes every other rotation.

Defense pairs are

Suter-Jared Spurgeon

Marco Scandella-Nate Prosser

Brodin-Dumba

I'll be interested to see how the heck Yeo works the power plays, particularly after they expire. If he goes with the first/second units the way they've been, he's got forwards sprinkled from every line on both units.

Here is Mike Yeo:

New lines: Potential line combinations. Try some stuff out. See how it works.

Parise/Koivu: We're trying some stuff. We know that those guys are very good together and dangerous together. We want to see if they can click with some other guys and strengthen our whole group. Obviously both guys are great players and both guys are threats any time they're on the ice no matter who they're with.

Heatley/Fontaine, how will you decide who's up with Coyle line, who's down with Konopla line: Who's playing the best? It's pretty much that simple and that's the same for everybody. We've got more competition, more guys, another healthy guy that we feel is a threat to contribute on the offensive side of things and that gives us the freedom to shuffle things a little bit more.

Start with dany there?: I don't know.

Mikko: Part of the idea of switching them too is those guys, we're playing against Chicago, who are they going to throw on the ice against them? They're going to get their top matchup, they're going to get Toews, who's one of the top defensive guys in the league. With Charlie out the way we've had our lines, it's been a little easy for teams to match up against us. There's a big difference in this league playing against top defensive pairings, playing against top defensive forwards. Now we'd like to think that we're spread a little bit more where you might have to pick your poison.

Mikko: He can easily have five or six more points right now. He's been doing a lot of great things. This is not by any means an indication that we're not happy with him or his game and likewise for anybody through the lineup. This is something that we all said right from the beginning of the year, right, that we wanted to see more line combinations, so let's not turn it into that just because we're trying a new line that we're not happy with the way things are going.

Nino/Cooke?: I think if you look at every line right now the way we've got it, we've got skill on each line, we've got a big body, we've got a guy that should get to the net. We've got a little bit of everything on every line. If we're going to make a switch with Mikko – not to say that Cookie is not a skill guy, but Nino is a guy that should be a top offensive threat. He's a guy with hands, … with a shot, … can skate, handle the puck, is strong on the puck. When we're looking at Mikko, we're trying to really identify what he needs to be successful because again, he's still going to be playing against the best players out there and he needs to have the right pieces around him.

Ballard? He looked good. I'd be surprised if he's not ready to go by Friday.

Granlund/Brodziak? One thing with Charlie being out is we saw Granny emerge a little bit. We kind of only slotted one position available between him and Charlie at the start of the year, but the way that he's been going lately, he's proven that he can be a dangerous guy playing at the center-ice position because of his speed, … the way that he distributes the puck, … the way he's been able to carry the puck and make plays through the middle of the ice. We want to give a chance to continue to develop that. Again, it's probably going to be fluid for a little while here. I hope that these lines stay together for the next month, but I'm not sure that that's going to happen. We've got moving pieces. We've got a guy like Brodzy who can move back to center, guys like Charlie and Granny who can both move to wing and guys like Zach who can still play with Mikko or Pommer and likewise. To sit here and say these is going to be our lines for the long-term, we're trying something. We'll see how it goes.

What's it say that heatley's even an option for the fourth line? I don't even want to turn it into a story. We've got a lot of good players and you know what, he's also an option for a very good line. This is not about individual players right now. We think on every line we're going to have a good mix of skill and guys who are going to be hard around the net and guys that should be able to complement each other.

Dumba? No decision right now. If he played his best game, we were not going to overreact one way and if he played his worst game, we were going to overreact one way. We were just going to judge this as a whole and we'll keep going day-by-day and see what happens.

Fair to say Dumba scratched Friday? Yeah.