From the Rink: Week of milestones starts early for Wild's Suter

ST. PAUL --Wild defenseman Ryan Suter reached the first of what is expected to be multiple career milestones just this week alone last night when he scored a goal and added an assist in a 3-1 win against the Dallas Stars.
The two-point night gave him 500 points in the NHL, making him just the 11th American-born defenseman to reach the milestone. He's the sixth active blueliner to reach the 500-point plateau and the 65th in NHL history.

"I didn't realize that," Suter said Friday. "It's pretty cool. I didn't even really notice it. It's cool."

Tonight, Suter will play in NHL game number 999 when the Wild hosts the Tampa Bay Lightning at Xcel Energy Center. Should everything go as planned, Suter's 1,000th game will come Thursday, at home, against the Los Angeles Kings.
After an uneven start to the season in Colorado and against Vegas, Suter has come alive, looking more and more like the All-Star defenseman did before a career-threatening injury sustained to his leg and ankle last March in Dallas.
Predictably, it took some time for Suter to get back to his old self, but even the best prognostications had it taking more time than just a game or two.
Over his last five games, Suter has two goals and five assists and is a plus-2. The Wild is 3-1-1 during that stretch.
"We go as he goes," said Wild goaltender Devan Dubnyk. "He's a big part of our group and he seems to be getting better as each games goes on, so that's big for us."
Suter's goal Friday in Dallas was the game-winner, the 15th time in his career he's secured the winning tally and the seventh time he's done it in a Wild uniform.
But even the stoic Suter admitted that doing it in his first game back in Dallas, seventh months -- and only a handful of feet -- away from where his brilliant career was nearly cutdown unexpectedly, had some special meaning.
"It worked out good," Suter said. "To get a win and help with it it's nice. Hopefully now we can move on and stop talking about it."
Here are the projected lineups:
WILD
Jason Zucker - Eric Staal - Matt Read
Zach Parise - Mikko Koivu - Mikael Granlund
Nino Niederreiter - Charlie Coyle - Jordan Greenway
Marcus Foligno - Eric Fehr - JT Brown
Ryan Suter - Matt Dumba
Jonas Brodin - Jared Spurgeon
Nick Seeler - Greg Pateryn
Alex Stalock
Devan Dubnyk
LIGHTNING
Yanni Gourde - Brayden Point - Steven Stamkos
Ondrej Palat - Tyler Johnson - Nikita Kucherov
Alex Killorn - Anthony Cirelli - Mathieu Joseph
Ryan Callahan - Cedric Paquette - J.T. Miller
Victor Hedman - Dan Girardi
Ryan McDonagh - Anton Stralman
Braydon Coburn - Mikhail Sergachev
Andrei Vasilevskiy
Louis Domingue