Wild's top 4 broken apart yet again with Marco Scandella's suspension

Darcy Kuemper vs. Alex Stalock tonight when the Wild visits the San Jose Sharks.

Stalock, the former UMD goalie and cousin of Gophers goalie Adam Wilcox, makes his first career start vs. his hometown Wild and will become the second Minnesota native to face the Wild in goal (Damian Rhodes, also from St. Paul, did it twice in 2001, the Wild said).

The Wild will be without suspended defenseman Marco Scandella, the Sharks without injured Marc-Edouard Vlasic.

On the Scandella two-game suspension, coach Mike Yeo said, "My opinion doesn't mean a whole lot right now. I think I saw it a little bit differently than what they did, but it is what it is. We'll have to get through it now."

Scandella said, "It's never fun to get suspensions and miss games, but I respect the league's decision and I'm going to come back and be ready once I get back."

I asked him if he thought this wouldn't have resulted in anything had he not done something similar to T.J. Oshie so recently, and Scandella said he isn't thinking about that.

"I'm not a dirty player and I don't go out to injure anybody," he said. "I'm going to forget about what happened, learn from what happened and move on from it."

This is a big opportunity for Falk, who has played in the NHL, to get some games if he plays well. He has given the Wild some good games this season, Yeo said, and the Wild needs him to play a heavy game against two heavy teams, the Sharks and Saturday against the Coyotes.

GM Chuck Fletcher told me no trade is imminent, but with Ballard out long-term, he will just gauge the defense for awhile and see how Folin plays. The Wild also has Falk and Jon Blum, whom Fletcher said is playing better, down on the farm, as well as Matt Dumba. Ideally, the Wild would like to leave Dumba in Iowa working with John Torchetti, but there may come a point where the Wild has no choice but to call him back up.

Dumba is playing 30 minutes a night there and has two goals, one assist and is plus-7 in three games.

The Wild has played with its top-four of Suter, Brodin, Scandella and Spurgeon intact 10 times in 26 games this season, The four were together the first seven games, and then injuries, suspensions and the mumps has resulted in them playing together for only three of the past 20 games.

Fox Sports North's Anthony LaPanta crunched the numbers.

The Wild's CORSI numbers with the top-4 together and without the top-4 together are dramatically different, and its goals for are 3.5 and goals against 2.2 with them. Without, the team's goals for are 2.56 and goals against 2.69. The team's goals differential is plus-13 with them and minus-2 without.

"It seems like every time we look like we're getting there, something else happens," Yeo said. "But every team deals with injuries, and suspensions in this case. This is not new to us. That's for sure. But there's no question I'd like to get into a situation where we can get those four guys going. It's a big difference to our lineup. Defensively, that's the first place you're going to look when those guys are able to defend the way that they do and help us in terms of how quickly we defend and getting the puck back on our stick. But also the execution part of it, the offensive part of it, these guys are huge parts of our game."

If you remember, those first seven games, the Wild's D were a huge part of the attack and the Wild seemed to always have the puck.

In the first seven games, the Wild's defensemen had five goals and 12 assists and were plus-26.

"It's tough to get into rhythms, so hopefully when Scandy's back we can kind of move on with it and get back to normal," Suter said. "Maybe that is why we've been inconsistent, but good teams can play with everyone and so can good players."

"Every game is a test for him and what you want to see is more consistency start to creep into his game," Yeo said. "But you can't fast-track the development of a player. Much depends on what's happened to them and how they react to it and personality wise, maturity wise, I think he's definitely grown in those areas. Now it's just a matter of dealing with all the things that you have to deal with as a young goalie, both successes and failures.

"You can't force feed that into a goalie."

The Newsday's Arthur Staple tweeted that Matt Martin and Ballard exchanged texts. By the way, I saw these MSG angles for the first time late yesterday.