Good afternoon from Xcel Energy Center’s spacious press room. Two days until the Wild resumes its schedule and five-game homestand against the East’s elite, New York Rangers. Thanks for being patient.

Couple Russo (overexposure) housekeeping items:

-- On Friday at noon, I will be hosting a live chat on startribune.com.

-- I will be on KFAN with Paul Allen (VOX in the BOX) Thursday morning.

-- I will be filling in for Dan Barreiro from 3-6:30 p.m. Thursday on KFAN. Guests will include Wild leading scorer Zach Parise, actor/comedian/writer/director/#oneofus Erik Stolhanske to talk about Super Troopers 2 and his second passion, the Wild (4:55 p.m.-5:30 p.m.), Rangers play-by-play man Kenny Albert (5:35 p.m.), Minnesota United coach Manny Lagos (4:20 p.m.), Wild radio personality Kevin Falness (throughout) and much more.

--I will be hosting a Podcast at O’Gara’s in St. Paul Friday at 6 p.m. You can come listen live or on souhanunfiltered.com. I believe Minnesota United’s Jamie Watson will be my guest.

--Friday’s, I’m usually on with Barreiro at 4:30 p.m., too.

Since I mentioned jokingly on a recent blog that I also wrote articles, I was told by a few readers it would be helpful if I threw links on here. You can always see the Star Tribune’s Wild stories on www.startribune.com/wild, BUT if you missed the last couple:

-- Here was Monday’s story on Jason Zucker’s road back from a broken collarbone and much he is champing at the bit to start playing because he feels 100 percent.

-- Here is the behind the scenes look at the NHL’s Situation Room (video review room) in Toronto. I shadowed the room March 22 -- the day before the Wild played in Toronto. This is one of those days where it’s a good idea to pick up the actual NEWSPAPER though because the layout and pictures on the C1 centerpiece are cool.

-- Here is Chip Scoggins' column today on veterans Mikko Koivu, Ryan Suter and Thomas Vanek and their solid second halves.

Today felt like training camp. Soooooooooooooooo many players on the ice.

Three goalies, 15 forwards to the point there was a full fifth line (Matt Cooke-Erik Haula-Sean Bergenheim) and seven defensemen with Christian Folin back up with the team. The only players who did not skate with the team but did before practice were Zucker and Nate Prosser. Prosser is getting closer from his sprained MCL.

Cooke, who has missed 27 games starting Feb. 3 with a sports hernia that was surgically repairs, practiced for the first time since. I thought he looks great personally.

Asked how long he thinks he’ll need before he can play, Cooke said, “Today was the first day. I’ll see how it reacts tonight to see if I can skate tomorrow and yada, yada, yada. Then we can get a better sense. First real practice. I’ll take it, not to go cliché-ish, day by day. I just hope it’s before the end of the season (so he can get some games before the playoffs).”

Kyle Brodziak, who has missed three games with a neck issue, took a couple shots, took a couple days of rest and returned to practice. He will play against the Rangers.

Coach Mike Yeo said the lineup Thursday is up in the air. However, Yeo said the top three lines will stay intact and he said Brodziak is returning, so that means two of Ryan Carter, Jordan Schroeder and Haula will play. And since Haula was on the fifth line wearing all red today, one would assume he’s the odd guy out initially. That’s what I guessed in my game notebook Sunday here.

On how difficult these decisions are, Yeo said, “It’s going to be hard and everybody’s going to have an argument, and everybody’s going to have an opinion. In many cases, it’s going to be right. In a lot of ways it’s going to be difficult for us to make a wrong choice. In other ways, difficult for us to make the right choice just because everybody that’s here has had an impact in getting us here. Everybody has had success with us at different points of the season. And everybody that’s here we feel could help us. So, what that means is there’s going to be people out of the lineup that are very tough decisions to make. But at the same time, the people that are in will recognize that and they’ll take advantage of the opportunity.”

On the amount of guys on the ice, Yeo said, “It obviously presents some challenges. The ice gets chewed up a little bit quicker and fewer repetitions for guys, both for the guys that have been in the lineup and the guys trying to get ready to get back in the lineup. So, yeah, it’s not easy to do. But I thought it was still a pretty good tempo to our practice and a good skate.”

How does that change the way he coaches practice? “It makes it a little bit different in how you prepare and plan your practices. You have to be a little bit more mindful of some of the drills that you’re doing, making sure there’s not a lot of standing around time. And making sure trying to find a way for everybody to get their reps. It changes some of the things that you might do at this time. Certainly looking at our game, it’s tough to have a type of practice where you’re going to have a lot of teaching and system focus. I just think looking at these couple days, the one thing that was going to be important to us, our priority had to be to make sure that we get our battle level ramped back up and the pace of our play, and obviously a little bit of conditioning.”

On the luxury of depth, Yeo said, “It can be a good thing if we handle it the right way. Obviously, we want to make the playoffs, but we don’t want to just make the playoffs. We want to have a real long run here and depth always comes into play for something like that. Certainly we have a lot of depth here. But it does present some challenges as far as making sure that guys in the lineup are not worried about every single shift that they’re going to be coming out of the lineup. And guys that are out of the lineup trying to keep them positive and motivated and ready. But bottom line is we have to make sure everyone is focused on their job and it’s up to us to try and navigate around all that.”

Cooke said of the fact there will be tough decisions as to who sits, “I think the thing that makes a team the best is whoever’s in the lineup or not in the lineup is going to go out and get the job done. The biggest thing the last two months is it hasn’t always been the same guy, it hasn’t always been the same group, guys have been hurt, guys have floated in and out through different parts of this stretch, but the job gets done. The only way that can happen is if there’s no worry or no hesitation about the decisions that are made. If the decisions are made, everyone accepts it and takes on the responsibility of what’s given that night and moves forward.”

Carter and Brodziak can kill penalties, and because of the speed of Schroeder and the fact he’s suddenly killing penalties, it makes Haula a bit expendable. That could be vice versa soon, too, because Haula has been an important fixture to the PK and had such a good playoff for the Wild last year.

Yeo said, “Penalty killing is a huge factor in the makeup of that fourth line. I definitely will say that’s true. I will say also just the idea of a fourth line that is going to be reliable, that’s not going to get scored against, that’s going to be bring momentum to us with the way that they play the game. You look at the way our top three lines are, we believe that those are three lines that really should be able to go out and contribute and create offense for us. Not that we’re not asking our fourth line to generate anything but priority has to be on defense and momentum, and like I said, that penalty killing role.”

On the top three lines, Yeo said, “I don’t see any reason why we would change anything up right now in the immediate future. Obviously things could change, but I look at a guy like Fonzie (Justin Fontaine) and there’s no reason why he should be looking over his shoulder. Certainly you look at the Islander game, we felt that we needed to switch for that game (he means that Schroeder took Fontaine’s in the third period and overtime), but this is not situation where if he has one bad game, one bad period. Doesn’t mean you might not change things during a game, but he’s earned enough to give him a chance to go out and respond.”

I just looked it up, and I have the Wild 4-0-1 this season after three-day breaks and 1-1 after four-day breaks (the win after the All-Star break, the loss being in Anaheim when the Wild had five days off between Games 2 and 3 and frankly played great).

Yeo said of the four-day break, “You want to be careful. We’ve got to make sure, especially during this break, that we don’t sit around feeling too good about ourselves. I think that Thursday’s game will be a real challenge for us. That’s going to be real difficult to ramp it back up and take it back to the level; … we were playing so many games in such a short period of time that we were just in a rhythm that we could just keep on going. That rhythm we’re going to try to have to start it again, which is always a bit of a challenge.

“I think the break is good,” Yeo said. “We’ve got to find a way to get our game back up to that level that we were playing that, and hopefully it happens right from the drop of the puck. The key is to make sure we build every game, every period toward the goal of getting to the playoffs but more importantly making sure our game is at the level we want it at once we enter the playoffs.”

Asked if the break benefits Devan Dubnyk the most because he has started 34 straight games for the Wild and 35 in a row overall, Yeo said, “I think a lot of guys benefit. I’ve had to answer the question over and over and over again. I don’t think he’s shown any signs of fatigue. I know it’s been a hot topic. But there’s no signs of it whatsoever. But I think the fact he gets a couple days off is certainly good for him, probably a bit of a mental break as well. But I think for everybody, more so the mental part of it than the physical part of it. I think we’ve managed things pretty well [the second half] as far as making sure guys get days off, off days not pushing guys too hard. That was a big factor in why we’ve been able to be on this [24-5-1] run. You don’t go on a run like that if you’re showing signs of fatigue.”

Parise isn’t worried about the team ramping things back up after the break, saying, “We played a lot of hockey. It felt like we were playing every other day. You get tired. It was a welcome break. I don’t see us losing any of that momentum that we had. It was good timing.”

Asked if it’s hard not to look ahead at potential playoff matchups against Nashville, Anaheim or St. Louis, Parise said, “It’s not hard. It’s still tight. There’s still a lot of different things that can happen. There’s a lot of different matchups and teams behind us that are winning. We still can’t afford to not play well. A lot of stuff can happen. As exciting as it is and exciting as it has been the last little while, we can’t look too far ahead. Thursday we play a really good team.”

Wild has 95 points. Most points the Kings can get is 100. So 5 is your magic number (Wild has 5 regulation/overtime wins more than L.A., by the way, which is the tiebreaker. Wild’s in sensational shape as it has more points than L.A., Winnipeg and the two teams second and third in the Pacific, Vancouver and Calgary, who can max get 101 points.