ROMIE HITS THE POST: THE WILD WILL GO WITH KUEMPER primepucks.com Fri 1/31/14 4:46 AM

The Minnesota Wild, currently, have a three headed goalie stool with Josh Harding, Niklas Backstrom and Darcy Kuemper. From a fantasy point of view having a team sharing 3 goalies is not an ideal situation as they dilute each others ice time.  The reality is that Harding is ill, Backstrom struggles to stay healthy at age 35, and despite his limited NHL experience of only 30 games, Darcy Kuemper appears to be the starter in goal for the Wild going forward.  Harding started the year off strong, and for a couple of months, he was the best goaltender in the NHL, going 18-7-3 with a remarkable 1.66 goals against average and a .933 save percentage.  Unfortunately, Harding has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, a very debilitating disease.  He has not played since 12/31/13, likely, because of the disease.  He has been practising for the last several weeks with the Wild, but there is no time table for his return to playing again.  The Wild have been very coy about his status, saying only that he has had to change his medication.  This almost always means that the previous medication was not working well enough, and so they had to go with something stronger.  If Harding is now on Tysabri, and we don't know if this is true or not, then he would be unlikely to be playing anytime soon, because this is a big time treatment.  Backstrom, meanwhile,  has been a steady goaltender for the Wild since 2006-2007, once winning 37 games in 2008-2009, but he tends to get hurt a lot now, and his numbers are terrible this year with a 5-11-2 record a 3.02 goals against and a .899 save percentage.  This leads us to Kuemper, who has gone 6-3-1 this year with a 2.51 goals against average and a .917 save percentage.  The 23 year old has good size at 6' 4" and 215 lbs and he looks like he will be the starter in goal for a while, if somewhat by default. He has played well for a team that has had a lot of injuries, and has been outshot on a regular basis. While he did get lit up a bit last night against Colorado allowing 5 goals, before getting pulled, he is the only choice for Minnesota right now.  He is worth a pickup if you need help in goal.