Perched on the precipice

Minnesota, where optimism lasts as long as a Kardashian marriage or mayonnaise left in the sun.

 

Roughly 3 weeks ago, on the 7^th of January, I returned from Mexico to a state that was giddy with optimism. The Gopher basketball team was 2-0 in the Big Ten, the NHL lockout had just ended, the Wolves were hanging gamely in the playoff chase, and the USA hockey team had even managed to capture gold at the World Juniors. All was right with the world as I stepped back on to MN soil, it felt like we were finally poised to shake off the funk that’s been plaguing our winter sports franchises for too long.

 

That sense of optimism ended almost immediately.

 

Kevin Love was diagnosed with a broken hand, the Gophers went in the tank, and the Wild’s 2-0 start is looking like fools gold with each passing game. We live in a reactionary world, and among the overreactors, I may be king.  But trust me when I tell you that tonight is a very big night for two teams in need of an immediate turnaround. Both the Gophers and Wild welcome teams that they not only should beat, but really need to beat if they intend to be anything more than the same squads we’ve been dealing with for years.

 

It’s still possible to put a silk head on this pig of a four-game slide the hoops team finds itself on. After all, Indiana and Michigan are among the best teams in the country, Northwestern just has our number, and Wisconsin will always be a really tough place to play. While it can’t be denied that there have been some ugly moments over the past couple weeks, but with plenty of time left in the season and a favorable schedule, nothing is totally f*cked just yet. Unfortunately, it’s going to get that way pretty quick if they can’t find ways to win the next two games on the slate.

 

Nebraska and Iowa have played some good teams tough, but they’ve also been routed by a few and are locks to finish in the bottom half of the Big Ten. Facing these two teams at home before traveling to East Lansing to play a Michigan State team that looks to be hitting it’s stride, two wins are the only acceptable result.

 

Blowouts would be preferred, comfortable wins would be acceptable, but a win of some kind in each game is absolutely required.

 

There is no way around this, with three ranked teams, and five "tough" opponents, in the six games following, these two contests absolutely fall into the "must win" category. Lose one and you’re deservedly out of the Top 25 (probably should be already), lose both and you’re on the fast track to possibly playing your way out of the NCAA tourney, as well as one of the most epic collapses ever witnessed. At the moment, they’re in a flat spin, heading out to sea, and if they don’t pull out of it, starting with tonight’s game, Goose is as good as dead.

 

The Wild’s situation is less dire, but that’s only because they’ve had fewer opportunities to screw up.

 

Every question asked this week has been prefaced with a "is it too soon to be drawing conclusions" or "acknowledging that we’re only five games in", but as Yogi Berra would say, things are going to get late early. This team opened up with a favorable schedule and has gotten amazing (and unsustainable) production from it’s top line, yet hasn’t really played a full 60 minutes of hockey so far in this young season. There may be encouraging signs, none more so than a strong game against perhaps the league’s best team last Sunday. Unfortunately, even that effort featured a series of lapses that turned it into an overtime loss, something that’s becoming a recurring issue in the early going.

 

The sky isn’t falling just yet, but by the end of the week, we’ll be 1/6^th of the way through this abbreviated season, and things could be looking dicey. Columbus comes in tonight as a bad team playing a back-to-back.  As a standalone opponent, that combination should translate into a win.  When you throw in concerns about defensive breakdowns, lack of secondary scoring and the next two games looming on the schedule (6-0 Chicago in town Wednesday), all the sudden the sense of urgency surrounding tonight’s tilt gets pretty strong.

 

Dropping tonight's game makes a 2-5-1 start pretty likely, which is not only a long way from what we had in mind a few weeks ago, it’s getting into uncomfortable déjà vu territory. If the modern NHL has taught us anything, it’s that holes aren’t easy to dig out of when 3 points are being handed out in most games down the stretch.

 

For comparison's sake, the Gophers are at a DEFCON 2, with the Wild only hovering around DEFCON 4. The former is poised to go flying off the rails, while the latter is simply cause for a raised eyebrow so far. But years of psychosis courtesy of these two squads can’t be so easily forgotten, and the same warning signs are starting to pop up. Tonight could very likely be a turning point for both teams, let’s hope it leads to new territory, instead of more of the same.

 

But on the bright side, you could be someone who doesn't like sports, then this would be just another random Tuesday in January.

Very bad things

There are many things in this world that suck, the following is a partial list of some of them in rank order:

78. People who try to tell me that Eddie Vedder's moaning in "Yellow Ledbetter" has some kind of meaning

Stop it, just stop.  You're only going to embarrass yourself, and I'm not going to listen anyway.  You know why?  Because I can identify nonsensical moaning when I hear it.  Yes, there may be the occasional decipherable sentence fragment slipped in, but in general the whole thing comes off about as lucid as me at midnight on St. Patrick's Day. 

The hardcores will always try to belittle you with a condescending "some people just don't get it"attitude, but if getting it means you have to come up with fantastical explanation for some (likely drunken) b-side outtake, then I'm glad I dont.

You know what I think it was?  A bet.  They had an awesome guitar riff, and a wager was made that the song could be a hit without any discernable lyrics.  In that sense, I'd love the track, if it was for the horde of Pearl Jam fanboys trying to make it something it's not. 

In fact let's just expand this topic to people arguing about music in general, a good song is a good song, and half of half of the people you know will always hate whatever you think is good.  It's one thing if you're arguing in a bar to pass the time because the ballgame is on rain delay, but if you actually feel compelled to find deeper meaning in a song or band, then GTFO of here.  Sometimes "Hotel California" just means there were a lot of good drugs around in the late 70s, you've been on a two-week bender, and now you need to come up with something (anything!) really f*cking quick.

These people are likely as not f*cking with you when they give you an explanation.  I know I would.

"Well you know, my hit song "Donkey At The Center Of The Universe" is really about my fear of taking dumps in public restrooms, in this case the impending BM is the donkey, and he's trapped in the center of a universe he can't escape, all the while just trying to return to his home galaxy"

You see how easy that is?

Meanwhile, the only lyrics that I will accept to "Yellow Ledbetter" are these.

Gets me every time.

59. "Sell By" dates

If you've been paying attention at all, you've noticed that there are two kinds of dates on food packages.  The highly useful "Use By", which informs me whether the item I'm holding in my hand is a delicious snack or maggot-infested bag of plauge, and the completely worthless "Sell By", which would only hold meaning if I were running bootleg loads of Doritos into Canada to be hawked out of the back of a van around the corner from a Weight Watchers.  Or as it's known in Canada, Bit Hefty There, Eh? 

(Not to say I haven't been there, we all did what we had to do to make ends meet in college, but with the price of gas and my proximity to the border these days, I don't envision it becoming an issue in the future)

So now I'm standing in my kitchen, fiddling with my food abacus, trying to figure out if I'm going to be noshing safely, making a couple extra trips to the toilet, or keeling over dead on the spot as a result of indulging in a bit of French onion dip with my Rip-L chips.  If the thing has a "Use By" date that had passed, in the trash it would go, no questions asked.  Instead I'm left to put on my food scientist cap and do some sleuthing. 

Do you know what you get when you Google "how long does salsa last"?  A bunch of other clueless idiots offering gems like "if it's not moldy, it might still be good" and "smell it, if it smells okay, try tasting it".  In other words, nobody has a f*cking clue what timeframe guarantees how long anything last, unless spores are involved or we're talking about bananas.  And even the ugliest damn bananas in the world can still be turned into a pretty damn tasty banana bread.

But why should any of us have to take on that responsibility, do I look like a grocer to you?  I'm just a guy trying to nuke some chips with cheese and get back to the couch before the TV timeout is over, NOW YOU'VE PRESENTED ME WITH A COMPLICATION!!! 

Truth be told, even grocers don't, I worked in a grocery store as a teenager, you know what the rule was with expired stuff?  Move it to the front, hope they don't notice.  We went by the same rules people do at home, if that kiwi is moldy, toss it, and scrape the bits of mold off the adjacent kiwis.

Yet instead of making our lives easier, and simply mandating "Use By" dates, some foods just have to carry "Sell By", or it's equally annoying cousin "Packed On".  All because some executive at Big Salsa didn't like how far out into the future the preservatives were pushing the dates, and hoped he could catch some consumers throwing out good product through duplicitous chicanery.

My solution has been to boycott any "Sell By" dated food, unless the store is willing to provide the appropriate "Use By" equivalent and sign a commitment pledging coverage of any attendant medical expenses related to use of that product on or before that date.  I drafted the agreement myself (thanks LegalZoom!), but I have full confidence that it's legally binding, hence the refusal of any grocery employee to sign of on it thus far.  But the struggle continues.

33. The Gopher basketball team's ballhandling skills

Will somebody please hand me my that large black Magic Marker?  I need to do some crossing off on my "Teams that might have finally turned the corner" list.  The Wolves have had a line through them for weeks now, and after the latest debacle turned in by the maroon-and-gold, they're about to be obliterated as well.

Given a week's time, every bakery in town could not produce the volume of turnovers that the Gophers do every 40 minutes.  You could breed puppies for decades and not see as many balls drop as this team does in a week.  What do the Gophers, this blog, and a pair of safety scissors have in common?  Nothing resembling a point!

Now I'm not saying the season is over because they continued their annual ritual of losing to a lousy Northwestern team.  But tight games come down to avoiding turnovers and making free throws, which happen to be the two most glaring weaknesses on this squad, so there's little reason to think any kind of postseason run is in the offing.

And if they go in the tank again, after all we've heard about this team being different?  Oh man, then there had better be some firings, and I mean everybody.  Different seasons, different players, different contributing factors, same result.  Seems to me you need to look for common threads at that point, and there's only one that jumps out. 

Maybe Tubby doesn't care if he's coaching for his job, but he'd better at least feel that way, or it's time to just come out and admit that they're not even trying.

28. Egg-white omelets

I ordered an omlette the other day, and was mistakenly given an egg white omelet, which is what they serve for breakfast in hell, accompanied by a pile of cigarette butts in place of hashbrowns.

It's supposed to be a healthier alternative, but it once again points out the paradox of prolonging a life that's likely no longer worth living.  Moving into the egg-white omelet zone is akin to being kept alive by machines while comatose.  Sure, you're technically alive, but what exactly are you getting out of the whole experience?

Besides, that whole cholesterol thing is being way overblown.  Didn't we all come from an egg initially?  So how can eggs possibly harm us?  That's like a fish drowning or the Incredible Hulk dying from gamma ray exposure, the whole notion is ludicrous.  I'd say you're always safe having a nice breakfast of eggs and sausage, since those are the reasons you're here in the first place.

15. Maple syrup flavored whiskey

What the hell is going on here?  Don't we already have an awful syrup-tasting alcohol called Captain Morgan, now Crown Royal had to go upping the stakes?  Here's a free tip, if you want your whiskey to taste like maple syrup, or honey, or any of the other swichy flavors popping up these days, then you shouldn't be drinking whisky.  And if you're pouring Coke into anything better than Windsor, well then we can't be friends.

The only way I can accept the presence of maple flavored whisky is if they thicken it up and intend it solely for use on pancakes.  In that case, Crown Royal would be upping the stakes, rather than sullying whiskey's good name.

7. The Wild missing the playoffs

If feelings about hockey teams were lakes, this one would be Erie.

We're only 3 games in, and 2 of them were wins, but something isn't sitting right here.  The free agent acquistions, the hype, the raised expectations, all of it is bringing on a disturbing 2011 Eagles/2012 Angels vibe.

Actual sports teams that go the fantasy route never seem to quite pan out, at least not in year one.  Now we've got a shortened season, leaving less tolerance for growing pains factoring into the mix, and it's making me uneasy.

Listen, you won't find a bigger Zach Parise guy than me, but the fact remains he's not a high-volume goal scorer, and that's still a glaring weakness.  Can he resurrect Dany Heatley and free up Mikko Koivu to have a career year?  Perhaps, but there's still nobody on this roster who can be penciled in for 40 goals without a doubt.  Not to mention a defensive corps that still needs significant improvement from anyone not named Suter or Spurgeon.

Now I get (fairly) accused of being too negative, and maybe that's just what's going on here.  But something has me uneasy, and it's nothing to do with any sort of "inside hockey" analysis, but rather the general pall over anything that starts with high expectations in this town.  Everything good seems to come out of expecting nothing (see: 2012 Vikings) while the things that are supposed to work out never do (see: 2012-13 Timberwolves).

But I hope I'm wrong, because another lost hockey season would be the 7th-worst thing ever, right behind getting eaten by a shark and right in front of finding out my new internet girlfriend isn't real.

The bitter end

It’s that time of year again, the time when most of my best friends become mortal enemies and spend much of their time disparaging the quality of my education. Yes folks, it’s North Dakota week.

 

Unfortunately, there’s a cloud hanging over things this time around, as it’s the last scheduled game these two teams will play for some time. While there’s always the chance of a clash in the Final Five later this year, or a national tournament game down the line, the next certain meeting of these teams has not been booked, and will be at least 3 years out under any scenario. This is a profound bummer, not only for us ND fans living in Minneapolis, but for fans of college hockey the world over.

 

Just over two years ago, I penned my personal ode to the rivalry in this space. Since then, plenty has happened to add fuel to the fire.

 

The Golden Gophers got their groove back, rising from the ashes of a mediocre three-year stretch to make last season’s Frozen Four, which of course feature both heartbreak (Final Five Semifinal) and triumph (West Regional Final) agianst their biggest rival in the span of a week. Now we’re headed into a series that’s reminiscent of the old days, with both teams highly ranked and harboring big aspirations for the future.

 

The only problem is, the future keeps hanging over the present.

 

I’m really hoping that when the puck drops on Friday, some kind of switch flips, and I get back the feeling I’ve had every other time these two teams met. An almost giddy anticipation, excitement mingled with nerves, used to take me up to these tilts, but now it’s just feeling like any other game. Don’t get me wrong, I want my team to win badly. The last thing that I need is to get trash-talked by another drunken 18-year old leaving Mariucci on Saturday, or get texted pictures of brooms for an hour after a Minnesota sweep. Points are points, and every point in this league is big, but knowing that it’s likely going to be 2017 before another head-to-head matchup just takes away that little something that used to make this more than a hockey game.

 

There may be one weekend left, but it already feels like things have moved on.

 

Some people may consider it a point of pride to win the last WCHA matchup between these two teams, but at the end of the day, the stakes of these games can’t hold a candle to a dozen of others they’ve played over the last decade. Closing out the Final Five on Saturday night would be something special, and obviously any postseason matchup with the season on the line is huge, but as for regular season conference games, they already feel hollow. The conference will soon cease to exist, and with that, all it’s great history will start the inevitable fade to black.  The defending champ of nothing is...nothing, frankly.

 

Because despite what people might try to tell you, when the puck drops next year, Minnesota and North Dakota will begin the process of ceasing to be rivals. It won’t happen overnight, and may be propped up by a chance meeting in a big game, but eventually they will just be two teams that, although close geographically, will be light years apart in perspective. Gopher fans will be more worried about the Michigan score that evening, NoDak fans circling the weekend when Denver comes to town. Time will pass, and new traditions will emerge to bury the old ones, perhaps even a few that can measure up to their predecessors.

 

My apologies if this is coming across like a bummer, but the truth is I’m bummed. Rather than a glorious final year in the sun, the demise of the WCHA is striking me as just that, one long drawn-out funeral. It’s impossible to think about what's currently happening without also thinking about the things that are about to be lost, because a lot of those things are why I loved the game of college hockey so much in the first place.

 

Now go back and read the old piece, my heart was in it then, and it truly does this whole thing justice.

And we're back...

It's been a long time since I posted anything here, 79 days to be exact. 

Or 1,896 hours if you want to be more exact; 113,760 minutes more exact still.

As often happens in life, the time got away from me.  A new job started in November has limited my time, the holidays and a trip out of the country for a friend's wedding ate up more time still.  As often happens during the end of the year, with so much to wrap up and as much to begin anew, these preiodic jotting simply slipped to the bottom of the prioity list. 

Truth be told, it was less about time (which I always manage to waste in spades, I assure you) and more about apathy.  As I said in the last post pre-hiatus, my muse was gone.  Sure there was a half-hearted peptalk that followed, "everything going terribly is not an excuse when terrible is the norm" and all that, but it just wasn't kicking.  I was burned out on the terrible, the terrible had done me in.

As a battle-hardened veteran of struggles with success, I'm not proud to admit that.  But this blog was intended to be a coping mechanism in sorting out the kind of crushing heartbreak only dealt by failure in big moments.  Not a daily dose of sports Prozac to numb the despair of perpetual ineptitude. 

It all got to be too much, and after the NHL lockout took away what seemed like our one chance at redemption before it even had a chance to breath, I tuned out.  As I said, I'm not proud of it, and rest assured that this blog was always coming back.  It just took longer than it should've, and for that I blame myself.

Several weeks ago, with a busy holiday schedule and heavy workload looming, I told myself that my New Year's resolution was to get this thing started again.  Since then, funny things have been happening. 

For the first time in several years, I walked into my favorite Vikings bar for a big game, it was packed to the seams, and they actually won.  For the first time in what seems like forever, the Gopher basketball team looks like a group worthy of expectations higher than "if they can just go .500 in the Big Ten, maybe we can make the tourney".  For the first time ever, we're going to get to see the team skate that we anticipated so feverishly when the news came down last 4th of July.

Do I take credit for any of this?  Absolutely not.  To the contray actually, I'm just hoping my return doesn't f**k everyting up.  Loyal readers may recall that this blog began shortly before the 2009 NFC Championship game, and things have been going downhill ever since.  If the Gophers get routed by Michigan tomorrow, I'm going to curse myself mightily for the timing of this post, superstition is a cruel master.

 But another funny thing happened in the past few weeks, Patrick Reusse penned this piece for the Strib about a potential end to our sports horrors, even inserting the word "Loserville" in it's title.  Is he right, and we're finally done wandering in the wilderness?  Who knows, but it's clear that there's at least a reason to tune in, win, lose or draw.

I told myself when this started out that it wouldn't end until we had a professional sports team with a title.  (And no, smartass, the Lynx do not count)  I plan on sticking with that.  Don't think I'm back on the bandwagon just because things are looking better, anyone who knows me will tell you I've always been driving it.  It's was just tough taking the time to rehash everything when it had already been so painful to watch in the first place.

Out watching the Gophers play Illinois last Wednesday, when Andre Hollins knocked in a half-courter off the glass with the shot clock expiring, everyone in the bar went nuts, just like when Blair Walsh kicked the Vikes into the playoffs.

That sound, for better or for worse, hits the tuning fork in my heart, and on both occasions, made me realize it was time to get back to work.

Let's Go Minnesota, this isn't over yet.