The Minnesota Wild is expected to have defenseman Ryan Suter available when it finishes a two-game road trip against the Columbus Blue Jackets at Nationwide Arena on Thursday.
Suter was injured late in the first period of the Wild's game Tuesday in Winnipeg. He finished the rest of the period but was not on the bench over the final 40 minutes.
The club had off-ice meetings on Wednesday and Suter was on the ice for morning skate. He said he was feeling great.
"Seeing him out there skating, he looks fine to me, so I anticipate him playing," said Wild coach Bruce Boudreau.
One of the most durable players in the NHL, Suter has played in 82 games five times in his career, and he played in all 48 games of the lockout-shortened 2013 season.
Two years ago, when mumps first went through the Wild dressing room, he missed just one game.
Since coming to Minnesota, Suter has played in all but five games, including one at the end of the 2014-15 season where he was healthy scratched when the team had nothing to gain at the end of the season.
"He's old school, there's no doubt in my mind," Boudreau said. "He's tough. He's a tough farmer."
Having Suter back will certainly be a boon to the Wild lineup, one that has surrendered nine goals over the past two games. As one of the stingiest defensive teams in the League this season, Minnesota will try to get back to its bread and butter on Thursday.
The team meetings on Wednesday included plenty of video work to try to shore up that end of the ice.
"We [need to] work on fine tuning our game, positionally," said Wild defenseman Marco Scandella. "We don't have a lot of practices [the rest of the season], so we're gonna have to be doing a lot of video and making sure we're really tight. That's our identity, playing good defense, and we're going to have to start bringing that back into our game because we've been allowing too many goals lately."
Here are the projected lineups:
WILD
Nino Niederreiter - Eric Staal - Jordan Schroeder
Jason Zucker - Mikko Koivu - Mikael Granlund
Erik Haula - Martin Hanzal - Charlie Coyle
Chris Stewart - Tyler Graovac - Ryan White
Ryan Suter - Jared Spurgeon
Jonas Brodin - Matt Dumba
Marco Scandella - Christian Folin
Devan Dubnyk
Darcy Kuemper
BLUE JACKETS
Nick Foligno - Alexander Wennberg - Oliver Bjorkstrand
Boone Jenner - Brandon Dubinsky - Cam Atkinson
Scott Hartnell - Sam Gagner - Brandon Saad
Lauri Korpikoski - William Karlsson - Josh Anderson
Zach Werenski - Seth Jones
Jack Johnson - David Savard
Kyle Quincey - Ryan Murray
Sergei Bobrovsky
Joonas Korpisalo
