You won’t find this funny, but my aunt and uncle live in Studio City, Calif. I was supposed to have dinner with them last Thursday night, but after spending all day at the Honda Center in Anaheim writing, it was 6:30 p.m. when I was walking out.

Dead tired and knowing the traffic would have been unbearable, I called my uncle and said lets have a rain check for this Wednesday night when I fly back to Cali for Game 5.

He said, “Michael, I have news for you, I don’t see Minnesota winning a game.”

Clearly, he should be the hockey writer because I picked the Wild to win the series. I knew the Ducks were better, but that doesn’t always equate to victory in the playoffs. In this case, it does.

Winning the series was a longshot, perhaps, but who could have figured the Wild’s season might end before the Timberwolves (as Kent Youngblood said today)? 

7:21 p.m. and Judd and I are still sitting here high above the ice at Xcel hacking away at our very angry laptops. Twenty feet to our left is the always hard-working AP reporter, Jon Krawczynski.

Wild players were clearly down in the dumps at today’s practice. As far as sharpness, it’s the worst I’ve seen them all season, which doesn’t bode well for tomorrow.

I say the only way the Wild escapes with a victory tomorrow night is if Ilya Bryzgalov clones into Dan Cloutier. Or, maybe pride. One figures this team wants to give fans something positive to remember.

Nevertheless, the Wild’s power play has to come through for victory to come. There’s no space 5-on-5, so the power play needs to execute. Also, the Wild’s big guns of Marian Gaborik and Pavol Demitra (two goals, two assists), and Brian Rolston, Pierre-Marc Bouchard, Todd White and Mark Parrish (one assist) need to show up.

That’s it from here.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 16th, 2007 at 7:28 pm and is filed under Practice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.