The Weekly Minnesota Sports Survey

#-1: Wild (Last Week: 0).  Finished the regular season with a win over St. Louis and a loss over Nashville (which turned out to be the last game of Predators Head Coach Barry Trotz, the only HC the franchise has ever known; he had been at the helm since the Preds were born in 1997 until he was shitcanned by the only General Manager the franchise has ever known, David Poile, on Monday).  Didn't really matter, either game, but seeing as we are Minnesotans, and thus pessimistic, we have to gripe about something, and that something is Ilya Bryzgalov, the trade deadline pick-up who has become the Mild's starting goaltender.

Ever since he began his tenure between the pipes winning seven-out-of-ten, he's become the mercurial netminder that convinced at least three teams to let him go.  What fans thought was a sudden strength now becomes a huge question mark going into their first round Stanley Cup Playoff series against The Bastard Quebec Nordiques -- although not knowing if speedster Mikael Granlund will be back from injury is also important to note and worry about.

The good thing is the opponent.  I think it's better that the Wild's first foe is the Colorado Avalanche and not the defending Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks, the Anaheim Ducks, which has the best record in the Western Conference, and or the best team on paper, the St. Louis Blues.  Two of their top players will miss at least the majority of this series.  Their defensemen are young and very green.  Most importantly, the sabremetric Corsi stat shows that this team does not possess the puck for one that one its division.  Chances are, they say, that a veteran team with some bite on the forecheck will finally expose the Avalanche D and turn the puck over in Minnesota's offensive zone.  Plus, it's hockey, where upsets happen all the time.

In fact, I can see a path where the North Stars v.2.0. can (brace yourselves) make it all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals.  This year the NHL has reverted back mostly to the playoff format a grew up with as a kid, where the first two rounds are intra-division.  If the Wild win against Colorado, they will face either a Blues team that has been slipping of late (mirrored by star acquisition, Goalie Ryan Miller) or a Blackhawks club that some people believe has gotten fat and arrogant.  And after that?  The Ducks, who are powerful but only really have one fantastic line?  Or the chronically underachieving San Jose Sharks?  They might (OK, probably) get rolled by a Boston or Pittsburgh in the last series, but it'll be a local hockey team playing above their heads for once.

We shall see.  By this time next week, Games 1 through 3 shall be in the books.

#-2: Swarm (Last Week: -5).  Welp, the bad news is the Smarm were finally eliminated from postseason play last weekend.  But the good news is they beat Buffalo Saturday 10-9 in a game where, according to the Smarm internal report, the team played for pride.  Ah, yes, pride, the last stand of the truly delusional.

Yeah, I've got nothing else.  The second game of a three-game end to the regular season (and possibly franchise?) this Saturday against Colorado.

#-3: Twins (Last Week: -3).  They eventually got swept at home by Oakland, a very good team, and then swept Kansas City, supposedly an up-and-coming team, at Target Field over the weekend before starting a midweek series with a 9-3 loss against Toronto (which ends the Twinks' first homestand of the season) Tuesday/Jackie Robinson Day/Tax Day.  Phil Hughes finally cratered in the sixth inning to break open that game for the Blue Jays.

No trends really to speak of.  Could talk about the anemic hitting, but that's nothing new.  Two more vs. Toronto before hitting the road for series against the Royals and the Tampa Bay Rays.

#-4: Timberwolves (Last Week: -1).  Loss at home to Chicago, win at home over Houston in a game in which Corey Brewer, Corey fucking Brewer of all people scores 51 (!!! -- hello, Tony Delk!) but lightly-scoring Gorgui Deng wins the game on a scramble fadeaway.  The Woofie Dogs then lose leads on the road against Sacramento and Golden State.  They now sit at 40-41 with one final game/shot at reaching .500 at Target Center vs. Utah this (Wednesday) evening.  The hand-wringing can come next week, but with all the pieces this organization has, it still feels as if they need to go through yet another rebuilding project.

#-5: Gopher baseball (Last Week: -2).  Well, any hopes of the Goofs Nine reaching the College World Series were dashed when Nebraska swept a three-game series at Siebert Field.  At least they didn't finish the screening week winless.  They beat North Dakota St. Tuesday, even though they originally were scheduled to play them Wednesday.  The Gophers had an opponent lined up for Tuesday: Hamline, a game that got postponed because of rescheduled conference games on Hamline's end.  With that date free, the U. apparently looked at the potential for some snowfall in the Twin Cities Wednesday (which looks like as of tonight, however, will move just north of MSP) and asked the Bison to come down to Dinkytown and dodge the riot debris to play the U. a day early.  Guess college baseball teams are flexible like that.  This weekend they hit the road down to Iowa for three.

#-Infinity: Gopher men's hockey (Re-Entry!).  You know what?  I'm still bitter.  Yes, I am.  Union's a good team, but they're a small team, and goddammit, we're the University of Minnesota, and I still feel we, all of us, got embarrassed by that title game loss.

For some reason I'm taking this defeat harder than the Gopher women's hockey team NCAA championship game upset to another 3-seeded small Northeast university that has no other team in Division I and has never won a title in any other sport until they victimized the Gophers this year.  I'm taking this worse than the U. wrestling squad finished second to Penn St.  I don't know why.  Maybe it's because I went to at least a half-dozen games and felt an affinity towards them, one that thus makes it hard to shake when that extension of you fails you when it counts the most.

Oh, and I believe the riots are the hockey club's fault.  Yeah, the rioting bullshit would have been a lot worse if they won, but ... I still believe it was the team's fault.

I think I could go on, but it's better that I don't.  It's past 1:30 in the morning, I have to wake up in five hours for a big day ahead of me, and I'm tired.  Probably best this way; if I did have the time and energy to complete this WMNSS, I think I would have popped a vein in my heart going into further detail about what a fucking disgrace this loss was.