Update: Cory Schneider starts for the Devils, Martin Havlat plays for the first time in 10 games after a lower-body injury and ... former Gophers defenseman Seth Helgeson makes his NHL debut in place of injured Bryce Salvador.

Good afternoon from the Prudential Center, where the Wild tries to snap a three-game losing streak tonight against the New Jersey Devils.

There’s a chance fellow Long Islander Kevin (sorry) Keith Kinkaid may make his first NHL start. The 25-year-old undrafted former Union goalie from Farmingdale, N.Y., is 0-1 in two appearances with a 2.22 goals-against average and .909 save percentage. Devils coach Pete DeBoer plans to divulge later on whether Kinkaid or Cory Schneider starts. He gave up four goals in a loss last night in Boston.

As coach Mike Yeo said after Monday’s practice in Minneapolis, Zach Parise and Jared Spurgeon won’t play tonight. They are both on the trip just so they could skate with the team this morning with the hope of accelerating their return. Also, they spent a lot of time on the ice well after their teammates left the rink shooting pucks at Josh Harding, who got a good workload in. The Wild will have a better sense in the next few days how close Harding is to coming off suspension and a return. He’ll almost 100 percent require a conditioning stint with Iowa after not playing a game since Dec. 31.

Yeo said there’s a chance Parise and Spurgeon return Thursday at home against Matt Moulson, Cody McCormick, Torrey Mitchell and the Buffalo Sabres, but that will largely depend on how they feel after today’s hard skate and a practice Wednesday.

Rookie defensemen Matt Dumba and Christian Folin, who each made mistakes that led to the first and second goals by Montreal on Saturday night, won’t play tonight. Nate Prosser will go back to the second pair with Marco Scandella and Jon Blum will make his season debut on the third pair with Keith Ballard. Blum hasn’t played in a few weeks, so he’ll have to carve off some rust. He had been scratched in four straight since his Oct. 31 callup from Iowa.

On scratching Dumba and Folin, Yeo said cryptically: “I’m not going to say it’s only one game, but I definitely wanted to give them this game to kind of sit back. Different messages to each individual. I don’t think I need to get into it right now, but just as far as in terms of getting their game back to the level that we need it.”

My gut?

Dumba’s days at least are numbered barring an injury maybe tonight. As I wrote on the blog after the Canadiens game, most 20-year-old defensemen should be in the minors developing, not developing on the fly in the NHL and costing the team goals in a league where you can’t afford thrown away points in the standings.

My gut, again? The Wild knows this, but it also didn’t want him developing in a losing environment in Iowa and also didn’t want to send him down the past couple days knowing it was about to make a coaching change. Back coaching its minor-league team is John Torchetti, whom the Wild trusts wholeheartedly, a person the Wild considers a teacher. My guess is now that “Torch” is back, we’re going to see Dumba down in Iowa sooner rather than later (maybe fairly imminently) getting some games so he can regain some confidence, play a big role with No. 1 PP time, etc.

I asked Yeo if that could be on the horizon: “I would probably not talk about those decisions right now. Our focus remains the same as it was at the start of the year, and that’s No. 1 we’ve got to try to put the best product on the ice and no. 2 not only do we want to be good right now, we want to be good down the road, so we want to make sure that these guys are developing.”

Obviously, you know by now Kurt Kleinendorst has been let go by the Wild. General Manager Chuck Fletcher is not on the road with the team and has not made himself available yet on the decision, so he has not commented.

My biggest question for Fletcher will be on these kids down there. If you read Kleinendorst’s comments, it speaks volumes when most the guys he felt bought in and played their butts off for him were depth players and veterans like Stephane Veilleux, Justin Falk and Brett Sutter.

Good for them. It says everything about their character, but in a way, it says a whole lot about the other guys, too, and guys the Wild and Wild fans should care about. It certainly sounds like Torchetti will have quite the chore on his hands.

The reason Iowa exists is to develop the Brett Bulmers and Zack Phillips of the world, and guys like Tyler Graovac, Kurtis Gabriel, Raphael Bussieres, Johan Gustafsson. Bulmer and Phillips have been colossal disappointments since they turned pro, and the others haven’t been good this year.

So that has to be a concern for Fletcher.

I talked with Iowa GM Jim Mill, the Wild’s director of minor-league operations, and he said the Wild “absolutely” still believes in these prospects. “We have good prospects, we have really good leadership and depth there and we should be a much better team, but you can only say that so many times. Now we’re going to find out. We’re going to find out a lot about a lot of people.”

Like Kleinendorst said to me last night, Mill said when he met with KK after Sunday’s game to make the change, “Believe me, we agreed it was time for a change and it wasn’t working for whatever reason that I don’t have the answers to and he obviously didn’t have the answers to. It was time to get a different voice. This was not working.”

On Torchetti’s return, Mill said, “He was our coach for two years and he was going to be our coach going forward in Des Moines, but he was offered an opportunity financially that he couldn’t turn down [in Russia] and we were completely understanding what he had to try.

“He’s got a great track record of developing and winning. We believed in it at the time we hired him originally and still do and he’s done this transition thing before, which is a difficult thing.”

I typically take player quotes when a coach is fired with a grain of salt. You don’t often get the truth, but Iowa Wild captain Stephane Veilleux, up with the Big Wild right now, felt genuinely upset for Kleinendorst about the firing.

“It’s everybody together,” Veilleux said. “It’s not one individual, it’s not one coach. Sometimes it’s a team thing. You don’t want to put the blame necessarily on one aspect of the game. It’s the whole game in general. There’s some missing answers down there and sometimes there needs to be a change. He’s a great man. He won in the past. He got a Calder Cup. He did something right, you know? Sometimes for whatever reasons things don’t work out. You always feel bad for a guy like that. He’s the type of coach who was in his office from 6 in the morning ‘til 5 p.m. You hate to see a guy like him go.”

Lastly, from today’s skate:

Yeo on Parise not playing his old Devils: “I know for a fact that he would have loved to have been in the lineup to no. 1 to help us get things going in the right direction and no. 2 he’s had so many great memories here and this was such a big part of his career. It was difficult for him not to be in the lineup, but we just have to follow due process here with him and make sure when we get him back, we keep him in the lineup for good.”

On what he wants to see from Blum: “Composure. That’s what I’m expecting to see and that’s what we’re counting on him to bring. Execution coming out of our own zone hasn’t been good enough. It’s a big factor why we’re not scoring goals.”

Yeo said Matt Cooke’s injury is not coming along as quickly as everybody hoped and he’s not close to a return.

Ryan Carter’s excited for his return to New Jersey tonight.

Talk tonight.