Winning one… and losing one…. I think that is what many fans would have predicted for the Wild’s last week… But not in the order it took place. Raise your hand if you thought we were winning in Dallas. Yeah… me neither. The hope is why we keep tuning in (getting to hear Anthony LaPanta’s sweet voice is just a bonus) and winning the game as we did just builds it back up. Great stuff!
So to celebrate our collective renewed hope, I present for your reading pleasure, the week thirteen edition of “The State of Hockey… In the State of Hockey.” If you like it, tell your neighbors. If you don’t… take that opinion to your grave. Nobody needs to hear bad things about my work.
-As fun as the comeback win in Dallas was to watch, it was pretty clear we stole one against the Stars and probably didn’t deserve the outcome we got. It took us scoring on our last three shots in regulations and overtime to come away with the win. A win is a win… and this was a big one, but I feel it just covered up the warts that have emerged as of late with this club. Lots of back patting… yes… but if we could get a 100% straight answer from the likes of Coach Hynes, Captain Spurgeon, and Self-Proclaimed Wild Know-It-All Michael Russo, they would say that we are close to teetering... but this pushed the needle back in the right direction.
-Now to the best part of the win in Dallas… we did it against one of my least favorite hockey players… Jake Oettinger. I know that much of the State of Hockey may not share my sentiments (Jake is a native of Lakeville), but watching him scurry off the ice after Faber put it past him in OT… well that was just a thing of beauty… almost as beautiful as the goal itself. The only way I could have enjoyed it more was if it was against Saros… or Binnington…
-Can anyone tell me if it was weird that former North Stars goalie Gump Worsley was part of one of my dreams the other night? In said dream, I was trying to convince my kids to wear their bike helmets on their bike ride, and all of a sudden Worsley was my neighbor. He shouted from his garage that helmets were for sissies while wearing a dirty white ripped tank-style undershirt and taking pulls off of a Hamm’s. I shouted back, telling him to shut up, and we screamed back and forth for a bit. Now, I’m no dream analyzer, but I think this one had everything to do with my anguish regarding the Minnesota Wild’s lack of a fully functional penalty kill unit. So what from that dream makes me think that was its subconscious meaning? Nothing… I just wanted to tell you about my dream and remind you all that our penalty kill sucks.
-This week looks rough… especially since to are on the road in D.C. and Raleigh… So the home game against the struggling Predators almost must be a win. Add in the fact that the visitors from Nashville are going to play their second night in a row, things could be really ugly if we turn in a poor performance. But, here’s to hoping that we dominate on New Year’s Eve in St. Paul and use the momentum to get one of the two on the road.
Prediction #1: We will lose at Dallas and look lost without Kaprizov on the ice.
Result: Wrong… We didn’t dominate this game and probably didn’t deserve to win based on our play from start to finish, but we did… and I was wrong (and not sad).
Prediction #2: Brock Faber adds at least one point to his season total.
Result: Correct… Scoring the overtime winner in Dallas clinched this one…
Prediction #3: No NHL franchise will move to a new city this week.
Result: Correct… Yes… A gimme? Yes. But imagine how cool it would be if the Carolina Hurricanes moved back to Hartford… Think about it.
Prediction #4: The Wild will pull out a hard-fought win at home against one of the NHL’s most boring franchises, the Ottawa Senators.
Result: Wrong… We lost and looked pretty average… but the Senators still are boring and their logo looks like the work of a seventh grader from their graphic design class in junior high.
Prediction #5: Mats Zuccarello will break the twenty-point barrier this week.
Result: Correct… Zuccy had an assist in Dallas and sits squarely on twenty points. Added bonus… no pucks struck him in his manly parts.
3-2… Not great… especially with taking a gimme! Now at 28-22, my status in the cut-throat world of predicting changed very little… but my predicting-making license has not been revoked, so I live to predict another day.
Next Week’s Five Predictions…
-Brock Faber becomes the newest member of the Minnesota Wild’s twenty-point club for the 2024-25 season.
-Ryan Hartman ends up the week with a double-digit negative +/- for the season.
-Matt Boldy changes his recent extremely bad habit of racking up penalty minutes and drops out of the team lead in this category.
-The Wild end 2024 in style with a big win over the Predators.
-Marco Rossi joins Kirill Kaprizov and Matt Boldy with at least 30 points for the season.
Non-Hockey Announcement For General Entertainment
Say what you want about his politics and time in office, Jimmy Carter was one of the best humans to hold the presidency of the United States.
Passing away earlier this week at the age of 100, and in light of my recent visit to the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site in Plains, GA, I thought I would share some interesting facts I have uncovered about the 39th President of the United States:
Jimmy Carter lived in Plains, GA. He was born in Plains, went to school in Plains, returned to Plains to start his family, retired to Plains after his presidency, and died in Plains.
Jimmy Carter won three Grammy Awards… all in the category “Best Spoken Word Album.” He was nominated nine times.
Jimmy, and his wife Roselyn, lived in the same home they built back in 1961. The house was recently appraised at $167,000.
Jimmy Carter was the first president to be born in a medical facility… in Plains.
Jimmy Carter’s presidential campaign headquarters was in… Plains. The building that was selected was the old train depot, partially because it had a bathroom.
The White House is said to have 5,000-6,000 staff members. Carter returned to Plains after losing the 1980 Presidential Election, a community that had a total population that is 1/10 of the size of The White House staff.
Jimmy Carter was married to the same woman, his wife Roselyn, for 70+ years. His marriage survived his presidency, as well as the presidencies of Harry S. Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barrack Obama, Donald Trump, and most of Joe Biden’s.
It is said that he has worked on more than 4,000 Habitat for Humanity homes.