Wednesday, April 27, 2016

The day that explains Minnesota sports

The digital Minnesota dictionary will need an update after Sunday. Under "Minnesota Sports," there's a new entry that should be right at the top: The performances from the Minnesota Wild and Minnesota Twins on April 24, 2016.

Seriously. If you ever want to explain what it's like to be a Minnesota sports fan or how Minnesota sports go to succeed in breaking your heart, just rewind Sunday's games. The main tagline under this dictionary entry will also be: "We can't have nice things." That's all you need to know.

A quick summary: The Wild lost 5-4 to Dallas in Game 6 in St. Paul. The loss eliminated them from the playoffs as Dallas won the series 4-2. The Twins lost a 16-inning game, 6-5 to the Nationals, that took nearly six hours to play. Those two sentences don't sound so bad, right? Well, you have to see what happened to know how bad it was. 

I needed the watch the Twins for work, so I spent the afternoon at home watching all 16 innings on TV. I thought I'd be able to watch the Wild uninterrupted in the third period, but that wasn't the case either. I had Twitter and channel flipping during commercials to keep me updated on what was going on with the Wild.

Sleepwalking to start
I won't spend much time on the first two periods because, well, neither did the Wild. They came out flat, as they have many times this season, to start the game and it was 4-0 Dallas after two periods. Yuck. I heard that plenty of fans left the building, and I don't blame them. Although I probably would have stayed, it being a playoff game and all.

I'm sorry Wild, but if you can't get amped up for a home playoff Game 6 in front of a rocking building of fans, what exactly can you get excited for?

The third was where it got interesting, in true Wild fashion. For some frustrating, head-banging reason, this team just loves to lollygag around until their backs are firmly pressed against a wall. It was no different Sunday.

Then the floodgates opened 
A few minutes into the third, Jared Spurgeon scored to get the Wild on the board and make sure the Xcel Energy Center heard the "new" goal song: "Let's Go Crazy," in honor of Prince. OK, so it's 4-1. Still an uphill battle. Then 16 seconds later it was 4-2. What just happened? A few minutes later it was Spurgeon again with his second power-play goal to make it 4-3. The place went crazy (Hey! Just like the song.). I heard from a few people that the X was as loud as it had ever been that afternoon.

You just can't count this team out. Ever. I don't care if they're down 3-0 in a series and down 7-0 in the third period of an elimination game.

What turned out to be the winning goal for Dallas, also in true Minnesota fashion, was a fluke own-goal off Devan Dubnyk. These have happened to him time and time again this season, this series included. A shot came toward the net, but Duby didn't see it, that much was obvious. He said later that he thought the puck was past him into the corner and that he heard yelling. He moved his feet around in the crease, backed into the goal and unintentionally took the puck with him.

5-3 Dallas lead.

Zucker's chance
Just before that, Jason Zucker had a decent scoring chance to tie the game. I say decent because I think too much was made of this play. He was coming into the net with a ton of speed, then the Dallas goalie Kari Lehtonen made the questioning move of throwing the puck across the crease. Zucker tried to right his stick with the puck on the side of the net as he skated to and through the net.

He had an empty net, sure, but it wasn't like he had complete control of his speed and the puck and missed an obvious chance. It was magnified by the fact that the Stars went down and scored right after.

The final heartbreak
Jason Pominville made it 5-4 with less than five minutes remaining. They weren't done yet, right? The Wild continued the final push into the final minutes of the game, as expected. There was a scramble in the crease where the puck may or may not have crossed the goal line. It's a huge debate. It was called no goal on the ice, they reviewed it and the call held up.

The puck was about a millimeter away from being fully across the line, which it needs to be to count. I was also interested in the fact that it looked like a Stars player might have covered the puck with his hand while in the crease, which would have been a penalty shot, but the referee didn't call it that way. That's not reviewable, by the way. Something I also don't agree with.

And so, Minnesota Wild fans were left with heartbreak, as usual. I'm not in the camp blaming the officiating for the loss. Or blaming Zucker for his missed chance. Or blaming bad luck.

It's very true that the Wild brought this on themselves when they played like garbage for two periods before turning on the jets. But hey, that's Minnesota sports.

This story was originally posted at WildXtra.com.

No comments:

Post a Comment