Playoffs in sports are a lot like turning points in relationships. You play out the entire process — 84 games in the NHL, a more fluid amount of time of airport pickups, wedding attendance, laughter, intimacy and so on in the case of a relationship — but in the end there are only going to be a few key things that determine whether you succeed or fail. And there are only going to be a few key things that you remember. It’s never quite fair because it paints a very distorted big picture, harshly judging at some corners while remembering too fondly at others. But there is also an element of truth to it, a put up or shut up moment, a pass-fail test, that ultimately you have to go through. And, well, the Wild broke up with their NHL season Saturday.

There are the things everyone will remember (in relationship parlance, if we are going to carry this thread through, these are the personality clashes, the bad timing and overarching ideological differences): Marian Gaborik failing to register a point until Game 6, not scoring a goal the entire series and being a team-worst minus-3 after leading the team in both scoring and plus-minus rating during the regular season; the Wild giving up the first goal in all six games; Nick Schultz all but knocked out of the series with an appendectomy; Jose Theodore outplaying Niklas Backstrom.

Then there are the things we tend to forget (nuances lost in the heat of the moment): If you refuse to accept the notion of a shootout loss not really being a loss, then the Wild and Colorado entered the playoffs with identical 44-38 records; that in the same acceptance structure, the Wild was 37-37 in its final 74 games; that Marian Gaborik can carry a team; that even though we can’t find it anywhere, we’re guessing the Wild’s record when scoring first in a game is pretty good.

Some teams pull through and survive the test we call playoffs. Some relationships work (just ask the RandBall Better Half or the 1991 Twins). But it never quite seemed like the Wild was a relationship built to hold up to the scrutiny. In a 1/14th size sample, you don’t get a microcosm of a season (the development of young players, the ability to rebound from slumps, the good guys in the locker room, the increased toughness). You get a spotlight on all the things that stood out during a season: the Wild’s dependence on Gaborik and goaltending, along with a thin margin for error.

You get ousted in six, you get dumped, and you try again another time.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 9:18 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.