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At the fundamental level hockey is a pretty simple sport.  Boil away the details and you\’re left with pretty simple steps.  When on offense:

1) Pass
2) Shoot
3) Score

When on defense try to prevent your opponent from doing the above.  If you fail at that, generally the rule is \”Don\’t let them do that\”….to which we apparently should add \”….and don\’t decapitate your goaltender.\”

Ok he almost certainly didn\’t do it intentionally, but he sure caused them a great deal of pain.

The Illinois Lottery officially started a new promotion with the Chicago Blackhawks last Wednesday: One adult fan would be randomly chosen at each home game, and if the Blackhawks scored at exactly the 10-minute mark of the second period — not a second over or under — then that fan would win $1 million.

Just five days later, someone sitting in Section 326 had already hit the jackpot.

Minnesota Wild goalie Niklas Backstrom surrendered his only goal, in Monday night\’s 40-save performance at the Blackhawks, to winger Martin Havlat at 10:00 of the second period. (The video of the goal is around the 1:50 mark of this clip; as you\’ll see, the timing was close.)

Isn\’t that just like a Minnesota team??  Seems like Minnesota teams are famous for allowing opponents to score their first ever goal/run/touchdown/etc, or get the record number of goals/yards/runs/etc, or break a huge losing streak, or whatever.  But surely this is a first that a Minnesota player won the lottery for an opponent.

But it gets better, and this is pretty much an \”only in Chicago\” thing.  Typically in the state lottery there is a 1-in-10,179,260 chance of winning.  Nobody bothered to actually check what the odds of something like this happening.  Turns out, they are considerably better…

Greg Esterhai of US Hole In One says the odds of a player scoring a goal at any second in any game is about 1 in 1,000. But Esterhai says that since the promotion is a season-long promotion, the odds go down to about a 1 in 25 chance. He said that this makes the goal promotion more likely to happen over the course of a season than a fan hitting a full court shot in any particular game, which is about a 1 in 50 chance.

So chalk this one up as a \”someone didn\’t do their homework\” mistake

It was announced that Marian Gaborik will return to the Minnesota Wild for this Wednesday\’s game against the Calgary Flames.  He\’s missed the past 27 games recovering from a \”lower body injury\”, which I can only assume was a hysterectomy.

With many fans becoming increasingly frustrated with Gaborik\’s lengthy annual injuries, it should be very interesting what sort of reception he receives upon his return.  I wouldn\’t be surprised in the least if he\’s booed.  As one of the people attending that game I\’d be tempted, even if it does violate all sorts of etiquette.

But we do need him to desperately start playing to prove he\’s recovered from his latest injury.  Probably 10 games would be sufficient.  Although if they don\’t have a trade worked out shortly thereafter I fear Gaborik\’s glass groin may make another season ending appearance.

Apparently Marian \”Glass Groin\” Gaborik has finally recovered from his hysterectomy and will be traveling with the team on their road trip.  No word on if he\’s actually gonna play or not, but reportedly the medical staff has wrapped him in bubble wrap just in case.

This is somewhat good news, as it makes his trade value a positive number.  It\’s obvious he doesn\’t want to be here, time to trade him while we can still get something for him.  And due to his rate of injuries, the Wild better have a trade already in the works so that the ink is dry by the time he hurts himself again.

I\’m officially setting the over/under number for when Gaborik gets \”injured\” again at 10 games.  Place your bets in the comments.

Those of you that were wondering when Gaborik was going to have his usual season ending (basically) injury can stop asking…..it\’s here.

And what you just saw leaving is pretty much any trade value he still had.

That is the question which has bothered Minnesota sports fans since the beginning of time….assuming time started in 2000. The logo doesn\’t help either….trees, a star, a moon, a stream and some type of, presumably predatory, animal.

What exactly is a Wild is something hockey fans were wondering as soon as the name was announced. However, at the time it was mostly important because what the hell do you put on a jersey?? Once the previously mentioned species-ambigious logo was created it became less important….one unlikely to ever really be answered.

That is until the Wild decided they need a mascot. So now the age-old question of \”What is a Wild\” would be answered. Then again….apparently not, because the \”answer is this…..thing, named \”Nordy\”, that looks like Yogi Bear had a torrid affair with Alvin the Chipmunk…probably right before he ate him.

At the very least at least they didn\’t have to come up with a mascot to go with this jersey.

Well the MN Wild proved their Minnesota roots by bombing out in the first round of the playoffs again.  It\’s good to see that some traditions never die.  So it\’s time to look forward to next season.  Certainly changes need to be made, both out of necessity (salary cap) and to also improve the team.  So let me play GM for the day.  Good news is there is a young core that is locked into multi-year deals.

Goalies

Ok I think this is probably the one solid part of the team.  Backstrom didn\’t play bad, he just didn\’t have an offense to support him and defense didn\’t always do their job and clear away the garbage.

Yeah, there are some things to work on, controlling the rebound and improving on shootouts, are probably top on the to-do list right now.  And Harding is a pretty capable backup in my opinion, needs some experience but that will come with time.

Defensemen

First the obvious move, trade Skoula for a used puck bag…..or assuming we can\’t get that, I\’m willing to accept a set of broken laces.

I\’d like to keep a core of Schultz, Foster, Reitz and Burns to build a new team of blue-liners.  Keith Carney, Sean Hill and Petteri Nummelin are all unrestricted free agents and I\’m inclined to let them go.  I\’m not overly set on Johnsson but his contract isn\’t up yet so he would work as a decent stop gap measure for now.

Obviously we need to bring in a few blue-liners to replace our castaways.  I\’m not aware of any internal talent that is ready for the big league, so that means trading for something.

Forwards

First of all.  We. Need. Centers.  We need centers that can win faceoffs in the worst way.

We also need a cleanup man, Parrish was a step in the right direction.  But we need someone who can park his ass in front of the goals and get the garbage goals lucky bounces that make the difference in today\’s NHL.  Yeah, they aren\’t pretty but they count the same on the scoreboard.

I think we can split up the Hanson Brothers can\’t we???  Simon is an unrestricted free agent, let him go.

Short on contract time are Aaron Voros, Branko Radivojevic, Todd Fedoruk, Brian Rolston, Marian Gaborik, Pavol Demitra, and Pierre-Marc Bouchard.

Radivojevic is a tough call.  He seems to be making genuine efforts but when it comes down to it, his performance is sub-par.  At worst I would call him trade fodder, at best let\’s see what he\’s asking for a single year deal.

Todd Fedoruk….okay he\’s getting up there in years (UPDATE : wow…how sad, I just realized we\’re the same age) but he\’s got that rough edge I think we still need in a journeyman type player.  I\’m inclined to sign him for two years if the price is right

Aaron Voros….ooooh, Aaron, why do you do this to me.  I\’m still naive enough to think he can get that spark back.  I\’m probably wrong, but I\’d be tempted to see if he can\’t be resigned for a year.

Brian Rolston has been a workhorse for us….a very cheap workhorse.  His slapshot, his work-ethic and his \”See the hill, take the hill\” attitude would inspire me to resign the guy.  Yeah, he\’ll probably be more expensive but I think it\’s worth it.

Bouchard is probably our only young talent that isn\’t on a multi-year, let\’s rectify that.  I\’m not sure it\’s really that difficult to justify this one.

Now we\’re down to Gaborik and Demitra.  Which are basically a package deal, without Gaborik there is no reason for Demitra.  Personally I\’m of the opinion that Gaborik needs to go.  He\’s a good player yeah, but not for the price.  It\’s fairly obvious he\’s not happy in Minnesota, every season he\’s injured for several weeks and even when he\’s healthy he\’s streaky.  So when it comes down to it, you get half of a season out of a really expensive talent.  Yeah, he lost alot of his bargaining power with his flop in the playoffs but I still think now is the time to get something for him in a trade.

And I\’d like to point out that I wanted to trade Randy Moss after his first breakout year when we could still get something for him.  At the time it was \”crazy talk\”, years later we trade him for peanuts.  Do we need to put ourselves in the same bag with Gaborik??  And since he\’s being traded away, do the same with Demitra.  It\’s just too bad we had to lose O\’Sullivan for him.

A few players in there we can lose that should be good trade fodder to meet most of our needs.

Coaching

Ok coach Lemaire is a good coach yeah, but someone needs to sit his ass down and explain to him that calling out players in the local press isn\’t exactly going to inspire loyalty and hard work, just bitterness.  And the last thing we need is hockey players clinging to religion and guns on the ice.  Not to mention that anti-immigrant sentiment in sport of mostly Canadians and Europeans is a bad thing.

Huh…..

Well…..

At least it wasn\’t another overtime game right?

Heh buddy, the rest of us thought we\’d head down to the Pepsi Center and play a game of hockey, and maybe an overtime period or twelve.  Apparently the NHL is holding some sort of tournament or something.  Winner apparently gets some sort of goblet or something.

Would be great if you could join us.  We\’re gonna start playing around 8 pm local time, so show up in time to get suited up and all that.

See ya there!

Love,
The MN Wild

P.S.  Tell Skoula we\’re having drinks at the airport bar.

No posts today….was at Wild game, just got back.

One comment I need to get off my chest. Skoula f-ing sucks. Just plain blows. Never liked him. Then he plays one good period to get my hopes up, then starts sucking again and then costs us the game.

Surely there has to be a paraplegic out there we could sign instead of him???

UPDATE: Commenter TJ2000 points out I am the top google hit for Skoula Sucks. I\’m proud.

It\’s also probably also worth noting this isn\’t just a response to the loss, or Skoula\’s performance last night. And I\’m not the only one with this opinion. I present Article A, last night when Skoula\’s name was announced on the starting line, the crowd booed…..that\’s right booed. The entire fan base of the Wild hate the game and he\’s costing us games.

Why is he still on the roster again?

UPDATE: My baby sis\’s boyfriend is apparently enjoying my suffering. He passes along this gem….