Rookie defensemen Dumba, Folin adjusting to NHL game

Darryl Sydor knows exactly what Matt Dumba and Christian Folin are dealing with. He has been there.

The Wild assistant coach, a seventh overall draft pick in 1990 who spent 18 years in the NHL, broke into the league as a 19-year-old defenseman with the Los Angeles Kings. He spent half a year with the Kings before becoming a full-time NHLer at age 20.

The biggest adjustment?

"As a young player, especially on the road, you might not get in for three or four minutes at a time, you may only play nine or 10 minutes a night. So how do you stay fresh?" said Sydor, not coincidentally picking out the ice-time ranges Dumba and Folin logged Saturday at Colorado.

"I talked to them on the bench in Denver. I told them to play it like you're on the ice during the shift: 'What would I do here?' Just don't sit there and wait for your next call. You've got to be into the game, so if you're playing only nine minutes, you're still into the game for 60 minutes mentally."

Dumba, 20, has 15 NHL games under his belt. Folin, 23, has three. This season, they have each played one home game and one road game.

"Going over video with [fellow assistant coach Rick Wilson], the first game, there were some good things. They didn't do a lot of bad things," Sydor said. "The second one, you're going into Colorado, it's a hyped-up crowd, that's when the youth kind of came out a little bit. Maybe nerves. All that stuff's learning. That's what every first-year guy goes through: How to play on the road, how to understand the game on the road, how to drown out the noise."

When your third pair is made up of two rookies, Fletcher said, "If one or two of your top four aren't going, that's where you can get into trouble. So thankfully, our top four's been not even just solid but very good."

When the Wild plays at Anaheim on Friday and at Los Angeles on Sunday, it appears as if coach Mike Yeo will have veteran Keith Ballard make his season debut in one game with Dumba and veteran Nate Prosser make his season debut in the other with Folin.

Yeo doesn't want Ballard and Prosser sitting around not playing, but he also believes it will be beneficial for Dumba and Folin to watch from above. In fact, if there are times this season when their ice times will be limited or they will be in and out of the lineup, the Wild might send one or the other to Iowa of the American Hockey League to play games.

If that happens, Sydor said: "That's nothing against the player. That's just reality, the process you have to deal with. These guys are going to be very good players for us for a long time regarding if they're in the NHL for 82 games this season."

The Wild loves Folin's 6-3 frame and his big shot. Getting used to the speed of the NHL will be Folin's biggest adjustment. After all, seven months ago, he was playing college hockey at UMass-Lowell. He has played the left side (he's a righthanded shot) at times the first two games, which Sydor said "probably isn't fair to him" and has resulted in a few awkward positions.

"Here also, it's more systems. College sometimes, you have five guys forechecking. That's not really the case here. Everyone's going to be in their positions. You just have to be smart and make the first play. You can't be skating around looking for the perfect play all the time. You have to make quick decisions."

The Wild loves Dumba's speed, shot and dynamic offensive instincts.

"You see what he did on the power play in the preseason," Sydor said, shaking his head. "His biggest fault is probably that he has so much energy, you have to control that a little bit. Sometimes if you're not noticed as much, that's a good game."