Shocked. Stunned. Speechless.
For the first time in a long time, there is something to be legitimately excited about sports-wise in this city, and for the first time in my lifetime, one of my favorite teams actually landed the biggest free agency fish on the pond.
Times two.
Sure there have been some big contracts inked around here in past years, but most of those hinged on retaining a star who was about to test the market. Those situations typically played out with a sort of gun-to-the-head, damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t unpleasantness. Kirby Puckett taking less money to stay was a home run; Joe Mauer re-upping for the ultimate max has been a series of singles. Kevin Garnett was the standard for monster extensions; so much so that it caused the NBA to change the way they did business and hamstrung the Timberwolves for the rest of his days here.
As for big name guys who actually reached free agency, we’ve always been more on the giving end than the receiving. It’s true that those departure often occurred through trade, but that was only because there was no hope of them staying. Unless you want to count Brett Favre and Jim Thome in the twilight of their careers, the only truly exceptional talents to arrive in the Twin Cities during the last couple of decades were Antoine Winfield and Jared Allen. Nice players for sure, but not quite evening the scales when compared with Santana, Moss, Gaborik and Garnett on the other side.
The issues were myriad. Some were preventable (cheap owners, poorly run franchises), some were environmental (cold weather, nightlife) and some of it was just plain bad timing. It seems as if whenever one of our teams had money to spend and a glaring need, the best option available would’ve been considered mediocre most other years. We celebrated the signings of Bernard Berrian, Mike James, Martin Havlat and (egad!) Brad Childress when they happened…then got a crash course in why their teams declined to pay them in the first place. Some of those guys probably could’ve continued to thrive under the right circumstances, but most of them were obviously not ready for primetime when a Minnesota team came calling.
This time feels different. This time we finally got the guys who could’ve signed anywhere, and might’ve even gotten more money to do so. Certain things in the free agency market are unpleasant, but ultimately make sense. Basketball players who grew up in warmer climes and desiring bigger cities with better nightlife aren’t going to turn down LA or New York for Minneapolis. Baseball players eyeing $20 million paydays aren’t going to throw away $5-6 per season just to stick around. But the fact we haven’t done better with hockey players? Now that was always perplexing.
Most of them grew up in places where the weather was on par or worse. Most of them weren’t concerned with what the club scene was like at 3 AM. A lot of them grew up just down the road. Yet the one star the Wild managed to draft in their history (Gaborik) was from half a world away, and cared a whole lot about putting himself on the biggest stage possible. Just our luck that things would work out that way. Even in a sport where you could field a pretty good squad from within 100 miles of the arena, the home team still couldn’t catch a break.
With the signing of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter last week, perhaps that luck (and the rotten luck that’s pervaded everything about sports in this city for too long) has finally started to turn.
Never underestimate the power of hope when things are grim. Last week at this time, I was convinced the fight was over, sure that the news would come down at any hour that Pittsburgh, or Detroit, or Philadelphia had won the sweepstakes. After all, that’s how it always works, right? We get in it for a minute, maybe even throw out a big enough offer to garner a moments consideration, then get jilted in favor of the bigger town, or better-run organization. Now, without a single game being played, this franchise has been transformed from a fringe playoff contender to a legitimate NHL entity…and man is it nice to have something to look forward to again.
Are we all jumping the gun on things quite a bit? Of course, but that’s the nature of the situation. While the people throwing out notions of a Stanley Cup may need to be tased back to reality with a lecture on how two players can’t plug all the holes on a team this flawed, let em have their fun. Many things could go wrong here. Players getting injured, highly-touted prospects falling flat, goaltenders imploding, not everything is going to work exactly to plan. But nobody’s concerned with that right now, and no one’s looking to be reeled back into Earth with talk of “overpaying for two B+ players” or worries about what might happen 8 years down the line.
8 years from now we might all be living in caves to hide from the cycloptic alien cyborgs, we might all have computerized devices embedded into the sides of our heads to facilitate communication, heck, 8 years from now we might be celebrating a Vikings Super Bowl title!
Okay, perhaps that last one was a bit too outlandish, but you get my point. Plenty of work remains to be done, but in a town where things have been as bleak as they have for as long as they have, let us have a moment.
Hell, let us have ten, because everyone who counts themselves a fan of the Minnesota Wild just had a 4th of July to remember. For the first time in a long time, the playoffs can be deemed to be expected with being called a blind homer.
And it’s about damn time we could say that about the pro team in the State of Hockey.
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