Minnesota Gopher Hockey – The Gophers are headed to the WCHA Final Five at the X to take on St. Cloud in the “play-in game” Thursday night. The Gophs were fortunate to overcome Minnesota State (that’s Mankato for God sakes) in a three game series that took 6 years, 3 months, 2 weeks and a day to complete. Actually, 1 game went into overtime and 2 into double-overtime before the Gophers prevailed. If it wasn’t for the stellar goaltending of Freshman Alex Kangas, the players would probably be sulking back in their dorm rooms right now. I think the Gophers have finally found their goalie, folks. Kangas is good, which is fortunate because the Gophers have a very hard time scoring. I never really thought I’d see the day when this team had a great goalie and no scoring. We may be, once again, entering a parallel universe.The Gophers are going to need more stellar goaltending from Kangas and hope for a low-scoring game if they hope to advance past St. Cloud in the WCHA Final 5. They have something to play for, however. Senior Tom Pohl sustained a severe head injury and had to be air-lifted to the Mayo Clinic for surgery on Sunday night. It looks like he is going to be OK, which is great news. His injury and recovery may even provide this team a spark to rally around. Who knows – they may even have a rematch with the Canadians of North Dakota.
Minnesota Gophers Basketball – NIT bound. Enough said. The future looks bright with Tubby and his recruits, though.
Minnesota Timberwolves – Break them up! This resurgent squad has won 4 of their last 6 games and now has 16 victories on the season! Oh, and 50 losses. Miami is a virtual lock for the worst record. The Wolves will probably finish with the 2nd or 3rd worst record in the NBA, meaning they will end up with the 10th pick in the lottery. Somehow the Lakers will get the top pick. Don’t ask me how.
And then there is this curious quote today from Wolves owner Glen Taylor about his team “tanking games (i.e playing Mark Madsen)” down the stretch during the past couple of years to secure a top draft pick. From today’s Startribune.com:
“I don’t like that so much, I don’t like that,” Taylor said of the notion the Wolves tanked last season. “It was more like, I’d say, K.G. tanked it.”
Taylor said Garnett took himself out of the lineup with five games to play last season for what the team called an injured quadriceps muscle.
“The other guys still wanted to play and stuff like this here,” Taylor said. “But it sure changed the team. It didn’t make us as (good). We wanted to play Randy (Foye) and some of the other younger guys. But this year, if they win, they win.”
Oh boy. According to Taylor, Garnett was the problem last year. He was "tanking it." That statement contradicts everything that has ever been said about Garnett's work ethic. It makes you wonder why Taylor is bringing this up now. In case you were wondering, the Timberwolves brass has been known to say, and do, some interesting things throughout time. Most of it stupid.
There is going to be some gnashing of teeth over this statement. Garnett’s agent, Andy Miller, has already fired back and called Taylor’s comments “without merit.” Interesting. I don’t think we’ve heard the last on this topic.
Minnesota Wild – The Wild represent Minnesota's only hope for a playoff run in 2007/2008, which is scary. This team could go on a playoff run or miss the playoffs all together. They won a HUGE game against hated Colorado last night 3-1. Niklas Backstrom was unbelieveable in goal, and Brent Burns continued to make a bid for the team’s Most Improved Player. The victory put the Wild in sole possession of first place in the Northwest before this brutal road trip to end the week:@ San Jose (Gulp!)
@Vancouver (Crap! Maybe a point?)
@ Calgary (They never win there! Damn you Kippersoff!)
@ Edmonton (A toss up!)
The Wild have 9 games left in the regular season. Much like the Gophers, much rests with the goaltending because they are having a hard time scoring.
We’ll see. It will be an interesting month!
Jeff
6 comments:
No more Tubby ball to kick around for 7 months. Oh well. Looks like Gopher puck will at least make the Frozen 16 but they are probably a one and done.
How nice it must be to be Glen Taylor. He probably has a bunch of bobos all around telling him that he's great, he's doing a fine job with the Timberwolves; it's not that his decisions are bad, it's just that they are not being executed properly. Kevin Garnett is bad, Kevin McHale is good. Black is White, White it black. Blessed are the rich for they shall rule over the earth.
Surprised Taylor hasn't been tapped by the Bush Administration, his level of competency is right up their alley.
mr. alonzo-your quips about everything connected to the bush administration is boorish, to say the least
anonymous: I don't know what political stripes you have, but if you are conservative, you probably will be flamed on this blog
I'm sorry but whether or not you are republican, democrat, conservative, liberal, anarchist, libetarian, klan member, dope smokin moron, or Barbara Bush you gotta admit that the current Bush Administration has been incompetent. I'm not saying they are illegal, I'm not saying they're evil. Heck, I'm not even saying we don't get what we deserve. I'm saying they have been absolutely, no question about it incompetent.
If you're so in love with the republican party that that you can't admit it well then I guess the whole world would seem rather boorish.
On the point of politics, I recently took one of those highly unscientific internet polls that asked a bunch of questions on "what I believe." The answers were supposed to hook me up with the presidential candidate most aligned with my beliefs.
Oddly enough, Obama, Clinton and McCain all came out with virtually the same score.
Somehow, I was not suprised.
But back to the original point...
It kind of makes you wonder what would have happened if Taylor would have ended up with the Vikings. Or.....the Twins.
While I like having a local for these teams, there is some serious incompetance going on with the Wolves.
Sounds like Mr. Taylor has a lot of sour grapes, considering how bad the Wolves record is this year.
If he can manage to keep his young core together, 3 years from now the Wolves could be scary good.
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