#-1: Swarm (Last Week: -4). In a suddenly shorter -- and loss-ful -- week, it's the Swarm which are on top, by virtue of their 13-9 win at Philadelphia that breaks their four-game losing streak. They are 6-7 but firmly in third place in the West, so their place in the playoffs should be assured. Even better, the rest of their games this regular season will be at home, and they can clinch a playoff spot with a win next Saturday against Washington at the Xcel Energy Center. Clinching a playoff spot? Hmmm, maybe it's time I use that coupon I got at the first day of classes at the U. for a free Swarm ticket.
#-3: Twins (Re-Entry!). Welcome back The Boys Of Summer -- and if their 0-2 start is any indication, it's going to be a fucking loooooooooong summer. In both games their opponent, the Baltimore Orioles, scored all their runs before they put up theirs (two in both games). Neither their staff ace, Francisco Liriano, nor their veteran, Carl Pavano, did a whole lot to help the club win. And remember that this is the Orioles we're talking about, a team that's predicted by nearly everyone to finish dead last in their division.
Well, so are the Twinks. The many projection sabermetrics I've seen say this squad will win between 70 and 73 games. I say that the front office will see that this is another awful team and will start to play their prospects (read: tank the rest of the year) in order to get another high draft pick and lose 105 games. This team sucks so bad that they'll need at least half a decade in order to get better. See, that's the stat regarding pro baseball inequity those that point to the state that, like, three-fourths of the teams in MLB have reached the playoffs continue to throw down as a trump card. If you make a mistake, it will take a long time to rebuild.
Of course the season is only two games old. However, the bugaboos of the Twinks that resulted in a 99-loss season and the end of an era which saw Michael Cuddyer, Joe Nathan and Jason Kubel leave seem to back to haunt the Minnesota Nine again. Their starting pitching needs to be better than last year, and yet so far it has been mediocre. And the starting lineup has to start knocking in runs, but they're not doing that either. I don't think Joe Mauer or Justin Morneau have done anything of note yet. Worst of all, this is all they have. This won't get better.
After finishing up with the O's today, they'll come back to Target Field to start the home opener in front of their loyal/blindly stupid fans and host the Los Angels of Anaheim Angels of Los Angeles of Anaheim Angels of. ... I say Albert Pujols hits four home runs in the series. The homestand is only a week long; they start the weekend playing the Bastard Washington Senators v.2.0.
#-4: Timberwolves (Last Week: -3). They're pretty much cooked. They lost all four games this week, all of them imminently winnable, ones they probably would've won if Ricky Rubio were still in the lineup. Instead they are mired in a five-game losing streak and in the worst stretch of their season, where they have gone 2-8 in their last 10 and 3-11 in their last 14 games. They aren't officially eliminated from the playoffs yet, just realistically.
Look, I didn't think they were going to make and I definitely didn't believe they should. But this had the makings of a good, young team, and one on the rise. And in this truncated season with so many other Western Conference teams in flux, the chances the Woofie Dogs could go on an inexplicable run were greater, even if they weren't great on an objective scale. But seeing these guys go through what they're going through now is a disturbing facsimile of the post-KG Timberwolves.
Another quartet this screening week: home to Phoenix, at Denver, then home to the Clippers and Thunder.
#-Infinity (tie): Gopher men's hockey and Wild (Positive Numbers and -2, respectively). Let me start off with the U. hockey players first.
As I always say, if you don't win your sport's championship, your season is a failure. That mindset is unrealistic and very harsh, but why else are you playing? So in that sense the male icers came up short. Pile on top of that their last game of the year, a 6-1 ass-kicking by overall #1 seed Boston College in the national semifinals. I did not think this team would be run off the ice like that, but they were. In particular I was disappointed that Goalie Kent Patterson did not have even a decent game. Finally, note that although the Eagles won the title game Saturday night over Ferris St., it was by a count of 4-1 -- two less BC goals scored than against the U. And this was Ferris St., a university that few people knows exist and fewer people know where it's located (Big Rapids, Mich. ... which is here on my palm).
However, you have to be pragmatic. Boston College's first two games were both shutouts. Eagles Goalie Parker Milner was standing on his fucking head all tournament. And they finished the season winning their last 19 games, their last loss being way the fuck back in January. So it begs the question: Is it better to be eliminated in a close game or a blowout? I say it's better in a blowout because you feel like there wasn't one thing you could have done to turn it around, and so you can't feel too guilty about losing. Now if it were a one-goal or overtime game, you would think for days, weeks, months, years or even ever, thinking about whether you should've taken that shot, or made that pass. Contrast that to tonight, when the Eagles hoisted aloft the NCAA trophy. Maybe there was nothing you or anyone could do. Maybe this was just Boston College's year, you know?
Still, overall, as the pain and anger over the loss is being put further into the distance, the program did have a successful year. They went to the Frozen Four for the first time in seven years and actually reached the tourney for the first time in four. That means Don Lucia will have a significantly longer rope to restore Minnesota's rightful place atop top-flight men's hockey. I'm just glad he still has the ability to lead a team.
Now onto the other embarrassment on the ice, the Mild. They finished their year being gracious hosts once again, being clubbed at the X 4-1 by the team currently known as the Phoenix Coyotes but who may have just played their last game under that name for the rest of Time. I can describe the Wild's play in two words: Listless and bored.
And yet they finish this week going 2-2, both wins coming against Chicago in the shootout (their SO win over the Blackhawks on Thursday at home marked four straight games settled in penalty shots and the fifth straight that wasn't decided at the end of regulation). For all our hand-wringing over how shitty this team was, especially after that fateful, tipping point loss at Winnipeg on December 13, they finished just under .500, at 35-36-11 for 81 points.
In fact, those wins earlier in the week against our hated rivals may have pushed us farther away from the top of the draft. We are now lined up in seventh, but it's possible that if the Mild truly tanked it at the end of the year and especially this week, they could have moved up to third. And remember that the NHL Draft Lottery consists of picking only one ball, the team on which would then rise three spots higher than their record puts them. The Wild could've gotten the top pick overall. Now, the best they can do is fourth. Pffftttt.
This team needs an infusion of top-line talent, and they need it now. The best way to do that is through the draft, but this franchise has this allergic reaction to being truly wretched and thus getting rewarded with a very high pick. The only thing worse than drafting at the very top is drafting right in the middle, where you're expected to draft only to patch relatively minor holes but the prospects still around by then have a better chance of being a bust than being a revelatory player. But the Mild are still stuck in this hockey limbo, needing a raft of new talent but never being able to select for them. Zach Parise had goddamn well better be signed to this new team or else.
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