Wild will try to get back to .500 on the road Wednesday against the surging Blue Jackets

Mike Yeo's Wild vs. Todd Richards' Blue Jackets on Wednesday night at Nationwide Arena.

The NHL's most sickly team vs. the NHL's most injured. The Wild will try to silence that obnoxious cannon of theirs.

Columbus, devastated all season by injury, is riding high right now, going 9-1-1 in its past 11 after losing 15 of its previous 17. Nino Niederreiter's junior linemate, Ryan Johansen, leads the team with 22 assists and is tied with Nick Foligno with 31 points.

Foligno, expected to play his 500^th game Wednesday, is tied for sixth in the NHL with 17 goals and tied for first with nine power-play goals. The Blue Jackets' power play ranks fourth, by the way, and they have power-play goals in seven of the past nine games.

The Blue Jackets rank 27^th in goals against (3.18), rank 26^th in shots per game (27.8) and 27^th in shots against per game (33.7). Sergei Bobrovsky, AKA, is the stud in goal, is returning from illness and has been good in his previous games against Minnesota. He is 3-1 against the Wild with a 1.68 goals-against average and .939 save percentage.

Wild has lost 16 of 23 visits all-time to Columbus and played one of last season's worse games there, a 4-0 defeat.

The Wild's coming off a hard-fought, well-played 3-2 win at Winnipeg.

This will be the Wild's third attempt to get to .500 on the road after starting 2-6 on the road. The Wild has won six of its past nine road games (8-9).

Same lineup is expected Wednesday, meaning Erik Haula will likely be scratched for the second straight game and third time in four games.

Defenseman Jonas Brodin (head) is feeling better and had a doctor's appointment today, and GM Chuck Fletcher told me it makes no sense to fly him here and risk his health. So perhaps Friday's game against the Maple Leafs is a possibility.

Niklas Backstrom (sick) is feeling much better and coach Mike Yeo said the team was even considering flying him to Columbus even if it was just to skate Wednesday morning. Yeo said the quicker the Wild can get him back onto the ice with the team, the quicker he can return. Remember, the Wild has back-to-back games this weekend with a big division game at Dallas on Saturday. So if Backstrom can't play, Kuemper will either have to play back-to-back or John Curry would have to get his second start.

This weekend may be pushing it to play Backstrom no matter how much better he's feeling. Remember, he basically started to get sick in that game at Chicago two weeks ago, so he has got to be pretty depleted right now.

Yeo liked Kuemper's game against the Jets and he said again today this is what the Wild needs consistently from Kuemper and Backstrom.

"We need both guys healthy and we need both guys playing well," Yeo said. "You can point to a lot of different areas where we may not be completely on top of our game, but nobody plays perfectly and you don't win without really good goaltending in this league. That's the reality.

"The way Kuemps played last night is very encouraging, but him like our whole team, we can't be satisfied with one game and have to look to build off it now."

I talked to Marco Scandella, who's riding high with confidence right now, and Ryan Suter, who admitted that his confidence is a little shaken lately with a slew of minuses and no goals since opening night.

Remember though, he had no goals in the first 40 games last year and then scored five in four games around this time of year. He said if they come in bunches, he hopes it starts and he gets a little of what Scandella's got. Everything Scandella shoots seems to be going in these days, and he talked to me about a shorter stick he's using and a new technique this year. I'll put all that in the paper.

On his play recently, Suter doesn't seem to be overly concerned, but he says he just needs to work hard to get back to his A game. He admits the good news is things can only get better from the Winnipeg game. But he definitely seemed to be beating himself up today.

In the first 20 games, Suter had 10 assists and was plus-13 in 29:14 a night. In the past 12 games, he has 11 assists and is minus-11 in 30:23 a night.

But he says that's just the nature of the team losing and when the team loses, with the amount of shifts he plays, he's bound to be on the ice for goals against.

Yeo did say he may lower Suter's ice time a little to try to help him out and he did say again today the Wild coaches are considering Scandella for No. 1 power-play duty. However, he said that doesn't necessarily mean Scandella would replace Suter. He said he has no problem using two lefties at the top to change up the look.

More on this in the paper.

Yeo gave Prosser a mulligan for some of the giveaways last night because he said it's not easy for a righty playing the left side.

"Those guys, they're hard to play against. That's what I like," Yeo said. "Guys come around the net, they're going to feel it. It shouldn't be a comfortable place for people to go. [Bickel] brings that element and Pross too. I think when teams are too comfortable, it makes it too easy to execute."

Yeo also liked Tyler Graovac's initial game.

"For a young kid, there's a lot of things he needs to learn as far as details. These things take not only days but probably more like years to get on top of." But Yeo loved his size, speed, skating ability and hands. He nearly scored a goal, made a great play to the blue line to set up one play and pickpocketed a guy in the neutral zone to trigger a quick transition in the first periods. Still raw, but he should become a player one day. He only won 2 of 10 faceoffs, so the Wild will have to gauge that and perhaps keep him from key defensive zone draws.

From my pal at the Columbus Dispatch, Aaron Portzline: