#-1: Twins (Last Week: -3). This has been a very bad screening week for the Survey. I really should put the Mild on top, but I think that's just Monday's dramatic victory talking. So I decided to go by straight record ... which means that the bottom-scraping Twinks are top this week. "Credit" goes mostly to a rainout-generated doubleheader sweep of the Toronto Blue Jays that finished their nine-game homestand. Unfortunately they then dropped two-of-three in Kansas City and started their midweek series in Tampa Bay with a 7-3 loss Tuesday.
The early club Most Valuable Player is Chris Colabello, who leads the league in ... Runs Batted In? Something like that. Joe Mauer, surprisingly, has been quiet. Regardless, while the squad is not playing like gangbusters, they are far above a 90-plus-loss pace.
This road trip is only a week and six games long. They return from T. Bay for a weekend series vs. Detroit, then begin a series hosting the Los Angeles Dodgers Tuesday. Man, I wish had the energy to see my Doyers.
#-2: Wild (Last Week: -1). What a difference one game makes ... at least when it comes to perception. After choking away a two-goal lead to lose Game 1, I really thought this squad was a broken team. If they didn't come back from it, at least they shouldn't. You have a young team on the ropes on the road, and your youthful talent and veteran presence can't close the deal? Those teams should be ashamed of themselves, and they seem to have played like that in Game 2, a 4-2 loss.
The difference, possibly, was switching Goalies. My how the star of Ilya Bryzgalov has fallen. He was undefeated through regulation in his first ten games with the club, but now he's been an absolute sieve. Head Coach Mike Yeo had no choice but to switch it up between the pipes. Darcy Kuemper's first-ever postseason start could not have gone any better: A shutout. Meanwhile, The Bastard Quebec Nordiques' top line, featuring Nathan Mackinnon, a guy who has been featured in every single front page of the sports section to the point of nausea I've seen, has been shut down. I don't think you need home ice, where you get the last line change, to win a National Hockey League series, especially when you had Game 1 in your hands and let it go, but maybe the Wild needed it just to get their bearings. Imagine what would've happened if this team dug themselves a 3-0 hole.
Games 4 through 6 are scheduled for this week. If this team is in next week's WMNSS above -Infinity, they have a Game 7 in Colorado next Wednesday night.
#-3: Gopher baseball (Last Week: -5). Drop to 6-9 in the Big Ten and 19-16 overall after dropping two-of-three in Iowa over the weekend. This even though junior Shortstop Michael Handel is the reigning conference Player Of The Week. Handel doubled thrice in Saturday's 11-5 defeat.
The Goofs play that make-up game this (Wednesday) afternoon versus Hamline at Siebert Field. Then, on Friday, they have a special pre-game ceremony where they will turn on the lights at the stadium for the first-ever night game at Siebert against the Penn St. Nittany Lions. They will also play under the lights Saturday before finishing up their trio Sunday afternoon.
#-4: Swarm (Last Week: -2). My friend was at Saturday's 18-12 loss at Xcel to Colorado. Despite Forward Callum Crawford becoming the Smarm's all-time goal-scorer in the first quarter, the Mammoth blitzed Minnesota in the second quarter 5-1, and they were off to the races.
When I saw on facebook that he was at the game and he typed out the score, I had to comment: "How in the hell did this team go to crap in just a year?" To which my friend replied, "Exactly."
Inexplicable. Well, the owners might be cheap. Or this team will be disbanded after Saturday night's season finale against the Toronto Rock. I am still unshaken from my belief that this will be the last Swarm game ever. That's why I'm going to that game. And I hope to get there soon enough to buy some spaghetti sauce at Cossetta.
#-Infinity: Timberwolves (Last Week: -4). Welp, after Wednesday night's 136-130 double overtime loss to The Bastard New Orleans Jazz at Target Center, they finished this season with a record of 40-42. Getting to .500 apparently was the red line that the Woofie Dogs dared not cross, and as soon as it became apparent that reaching the playoffs was a pipe dream for the umpteenth season in a row, having a winning record was the only reasonable positive benchmark this could accomplish. And they couldn't even do that.
Injuries did this year's team in, as well as last year's team. But another statistic should make Timberwolves fans mad: They lost their first 11 games that wound up being decided by four or fewer points. That inability to be clutch when it counts exposed this team as soft and mentally weak, I'm afraid. (I got these stats from Patrick Reusse's autopsy of a column on the Wolves' season. Great distillation on how this season spiraled out of control.)
And then the other shoe dropped Monday, when Head Coach Rick Adelman announced that not only was he stepping down as Head Coach of the Timberwolves, he is retiring after 23 years coaching in the National Basketball Association. While I wish him well, and I hope he can spend as much time as possible with his wife, Mary Kay, I'm not sure if I'm sad to see him go. He will retire as one of eight men who have won 1,000 NBA games -- and since he never won an NBA title, this makes his legacy the quietest, most nondescript ever to probably reach the Basketball Hall of Fame. And despite failing to reach the playoffs in any of his three years here, he did provide a sense of professionalism, stability and competence, three things that were in short supply with this organization, and probably will be scarce now that he's gone.
Nevertheless, I'm a bottom line guy, and the bottom line is he failed to lead this team to the postseason while he was coaching here. This year exposed a bad blind spot: His refusal or inability to trust rookies, as evidenced by the late blooming of Gorgui Deng into a defensive force. Could the T-Wolves be in the postseason if he used Deng more often and earlier in the season? Why not ask what-if? I can understand if people were fed up with the way Adelman handled his roster. I also think Adelman was similarly sick of not reaching the playoffs with promising but meager talent and decided he had enough of it all.
So I can't say Adelman leaving is a huge loss ... and yet I still am mighty afraid for this franchise's future. A Hall of Fame coach was unable to take this team to the postseason and I am still scared we won't get someone with the quarter of his coaching acumen. And then there's Kevin Love possibly wanting to leave ... and Ricky Rubio's reality falling fall short of the stratospheric ceiling people had for him ... and Nikola Pekovic and Kevin Martin continually out of the lineup due to injuries ... and a mid-range pick in what may be The Greatest NBA Draft In History (not to mention a history of drafting busts) ... and no free agent wanting to come up to Minnesota unless they have nowhere else to go. A shake-up might be a good thing for the Woofs, and yet the future of this franchise now looks so darn bleak with Adelman's departure.
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