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Media members started to get a little carried away Saturday while watching Avalanche center Matt Duchene take part in all the drills during the morning skate at the Pepsi Center.

Would he play in Game 5 against Minnesota for the first time since sustaining an MCL injury to his left knee March 29 against San Jose and give the Avalanche a huge boost?

Turns out, coach Patrick Roy said that won't be the case.

"It was his first day skating with the team," Roy said. "We'll see after how he is and I'll tell you more (Sunday)."

Duchene, who led the team in scoring with 70 points in the regular season, was expected to miss about four weeks to recover from the injury, and Saturday marked the end of the fourth week. He skated and took some shots for five days before Saturday and it certainly seems possible he'll play in Game 6 on Monday at the Xcel Energy Center.

Duchene is still considered to be an injured player and wasn't available for comment.

The Avalanche can use all the help it can get after being held to one goal and 34 shots in the two losses in Minnesota that tied the best-of-seven series 2-2.

Rookie Nathan MacKinnon said Duchene's presence gave the Avalanche a bit of a psychological boost, even though he isn't playing.

"It's nice to have one of our best players wearing the same color jersey as us and doing the drills and everything," MacKinnon said. "Everybody's very happy for him and hopefully we'll get him back pretty soon."

Roy said the Avalanche won't be making any major changes for Saturday's game. Other than deciding at game time whether to dress Paul Carey or Joey Hishon for the fourth line, the lineup will be the same.

"We will just tweak things here and there," Roy said. "We're comfortable with a couple things we're trying tonight, nothing very major. We expect our fans to be on their feet and to give us some momentum from that. We're going to need a good start, even if we're going to be a little nervous, a bit anxious."

Roy is hopeful the Avalanche will be able to feed off the Pepsi Center crowd for the kind of energy the Wild got from its fans in Games 3 and 4.

"The start is going to be very important," he said. "We expect our fans to be on their feet and give us some momentum from that."

PA Parenteau is one of the Avalanche forwards who needs to start contributing on offense. He had no points and eight shots on goal in the first four games.

"I'm not playing at the level I want to play at right now," he said. "I need to play with more confidence and compete a little more. It was tough in Minny, we didn't generate much offensively. We have to bounce back. We had two rough outings in Minny. They played very well and we didn't. We have to find a way. We made some adjustments and we're excited to be back home."

The Avalanche has gone 1-for-15 on power plays in the series -- Paul Stastny scored into an empty net in Game 2 -- after going 0-for-11 against the Wild in five regular-season games.

"We had a good meeting (Friday) and another one this morning," MacKinnon said. "They've done some good things and it's awfully tough to play against those guys. It's going to be important to move on from that. We're back home and we'll be a different team."

Here are the projected lineups:

WILD
Zach Parise-Mikael Granlund-Jason Pominville
Matt Moulson-Mikko Koivu-Charlie Coyle
Nino Niederreiter-Erik Haula-Justin Fontaine
Dany Heatley-Kyle Brodziak-Cody McCormick

Ryan Suter-Jonas Brodin
Marco Scandella-Jared Spurgeon
Clayton Stoner-Nate Prosser

Darcy Kuemper
Ilya Bryzgalov

Scratched: Jonathon Blum, John Curry, Mike Rupp, Stephane Veilleux
Injured: Niklas Backstrom (abdominal), Keith Ballard (groin), Josh Harding (illness), Jason Zucker (quad)
Suspended: Matt Cooke

AVALANCHE
Gabriel Landeskog-Paul Stastny-Nathan MacKinnon
Jamie McGinn-Ryan O’Reilly-PA Parenteau
Cody McLeod-Marc-Andre Cliche-Max Talbot
Patrick Bordeleau-Joey Hishon or Paul Carey-Brad Malone

Jan Hejda-Erik Johnson
Nate Guenin-Ryan Wilson
Andre Benoit-Nick Holden

Semyon Varlamov
Jean-Sebastien Giguere

Scratched: Reto Berra, Paul Carey or Joey Hishon, Stefan Elliott
Injured: Tyson Barrie (knee), Matt Duchene (knee), John Mitchell (concussion) Cory Sarich (back), Alex Tanguay (hip surgery)

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