HS State Hockey: Maybe This Is Too Much Clay Matvick

Lou Nanne is back on the air! It's good to hear Sweet Lou's dulcet Canadian tones again, talking alongside Clay Matvick, who by this point must have a picture of Anthony LaPanta that's riddled with bullet holes.

Today was the Class A quarterfinals, a chance for all of us to ease into state tournament weekend. Class A always strikes me as the equivalent of about the Prep Bowl, in terms of excitement; sure, people show up, and there's plenty of screaming teenagers to fill the effect microphones, but ultimately things are still just a little dead.

Not that any of the Class A teams particularly care. (Except for maybe Warroad, who should be playing AA if they had any dignity.)

Quick thoughts on the A quarterfinals today:

-- #2 St. Thomas Academy 5, Orono 2 - Hard to feel good about this one, STA being the most hateable of all the teams in the tournament by my reckoning. They're the defending champs, erasing any underdog advantage they might have had, and they're also a private school. Which is bad enough, but they also don't have the guts to play up in Class 2A where they belong, instead keeping the advantages of being a recruiter school in the metro area, without having to deal with other teams who might be decent enough to give them a game.

Cheaters.

-- #3 Duluth Marshall 4, Blake 3 - The Hilltoppers just barely managed not to completely blow this one, taking a 4-1 lead into the third period but then giving up two goals in about a minute. From a rooting standpoint, this one's a toughie - private school vs. private school! However, Breck's a metro private school, which is two strikes against them right there, and Marshall is at least out of the metro. Presumably they have to compete with Duluth East and Hermantown and every other decent hockey school up there if they want to recruit players, too.

Am I excusing them? Nope - but I'll gladly take them over Breck.

-- #1 Hermantown 6, Little Falls 3 - The dream season continues! Hermantown remains undefeated (and only twice-tied). It took four goals in the third period to do it - one of them an empty-netter - but the Hawks survive to play another day. (Specifically, Friday.)

I was willing to be on board both the Little Falls and Hermantown bandwagons, but thanks to the seeding process, they unfortunately collided in the first round. Tough darts, I guess. Ultimately, I had to take the Flyers over Hermantown, because Little Falls is out in the middle of nowhere between St. Cloud and Brainerd, and you have to like that.

-- #4 Warroad 3, Albert Lea 1 - The difference was twelve seconds of power play time for Warroad - seven seconds of a man advantage near the beginning of the third period, five seconds with less than five minutes to go. Both of them were faceoff wins followed immediately by goals - apparently, Warroad has the most efficient power play in high school history.

As far as rooting interests in this one, while I'm disrespectful of Warroad's decision not to play in the "real" division, Albert Lea HS is almost three times the size of Warroad HS, in fact is bigger than two of the teams in the AA final eight. It's hard not to take Warroad, a classic program that's as outstate as they come, in this one.

And their school song is the Minnesota Rouser!


So Orono, Blake, Little Falls, and Albert Lea have to endure the ignominy of playing the rest of their tournament at Mariucci Arena. The four top seeds move on to the semifinals: St. Thomas Academy vs. Duluth Marshall at 11am on Friday, Hermantown vs. Warroad at 1pm the same day. The final will be a public school vs. a private school; all right-thinking Minnesotans know which side of that one they'll be on.

Gopher Football: Closure

I've been waiting on this, and I wasn't sure we were ever going to get it. Sure, Tim Brewster's been great so far - he's been saying the right things, doing the right things, he invited Murray Warmath to practice and then ran the Oklahoma drill for awhile, just for the old coach - but he wasn't our first choice. He wasn't my first choice, he wasn't the department's first choice, he wasn't anyone's first choice.

That was Tony Dungy. We all wanted the guy, and (we admit) were kind of rooting for him to lose in the playoffs and get fired so he could come back here.

Through all the rumors and conjecture and interviews with Dungy, the one thing we never heard is that the Gophers had definitively made an offer to Dungy. From where I was sitting, it was like a seventh-grade boy trying to ask a girl to dance - first, you send Bob Bruininks over to talk to HER friend, and they negotiate for awhile, and eventually word filters back to the interested party that Tony simply doesn't LIKE Joel, no offense. And then there is punching on the shoulder.

Anyway, Jeff Shelman got bored and headed over to Bierman for a Q&A with Joel Maturi, which was pretty standard. But it did include this quote from Maturi:

"I offered the job to Tony Dungy, he didn't take it."

Ahhh... feels good to get closure on that, even now. It's time to move onto the next step of the year: getting ready for the spring game! Hopefully it's more fun than last year, when about 3,000 people showed up, only to discover that someone had decided to put the first-team offense and the first-team defense on the same team. Maroon won 49-0, for good reason, proving nothing except that the Gophers had no depth whatsoever.

Of course, in 2004, Glen Mason - this is true - let Goldy play a couple of plays. The mascot scored on a swing pass and sacked the quarterback, and somewhere, Bear Bryant affected the rotation of the earth by spinning so violently in his grave. So it can't get much worse than that.

Minnesota: Off the Radar and Onto the Page

It's time once again for the kinda-sorta weekly look at the sports that don't get covered by the Star Tribune, the Pioneer Press, or anyone else with a shred of sanity. And away we go...

-- This one actually made the regular news: the Gopher Wrestling team, as expected, is Minnesota's fourth league champion of 2007. The Gopher grapplers positively dominated the Big Ten tournament, winning four titles and placing five others in the top half (and shame on Yura Malamura for getting shut out, I guess). The final tally was Minnesota 156, nobody else with more than 100. The four individual title winners were Jayson Ness (125), Dustin Schlatter (149), CP Schlatter (157), and Cole Konrad (Hwt.)

The Gopher wrestlers now move on to the NCAA championships in Auburn Hills, MI. The championships run March 15-17. Minnesota is the odds-on favorite for the title, and must defend its top ranking.

-- The Dairy Queen Classic was a little more snow-bound than normal, but the Gopher Baseball team didn't seem to mind, as they had what must qualify as a very good weekend for them at the Metrodome. Thanks to the snow, the Gophers ended up with doubleheaders against #16 Ole Miss and #5 Arkansas, and they split both neatly down the middle for a 2-2 weekend against ranked teams. Saturday they won the first against the Rebels, 3-2, before dropping the nightcap 9-4. Sunday, they lost 5-1 to the Razorbacks in the opener, but came back for a 10-5 win in the last game of the Classic.

Arkansas was the highest-ranked opponent that the Gophers had beat since March 2003, when they beat then-#2 Cal State Fullerton.

The Gophers have a midweek exhibition against St. Thomas, then three more games at the Metrodome this weekend with Missouri State.

-- The Minnesota Swarm dropped a weekend thriller to Buffalo, 16-15 in St. Paul. The Swarm fell behind early and couldn't close the gap, coming no closer than one goal in the third quarter. Ultimately, the team could have moved above Buffalo for second place in the Eastern Division with a win, but will have to settle for their current position in third.

The Swarm are off this weekend for the National Lacrosse League All-Star Game, which is being televised on Versus, probably to make the NHL All-Star Game viewership numbers look good. Defenseman Ryan Cousins and forward Ryan Ward will be making the trip to Portland to represent Minnesota in the showcase, March 10th at 9:00pm.

The Swarm return to action in two weeks, with a home-and-home against Philadelphia on March 17-18, the second at the Xcel Center.

-- Short takes: the Minnesota Thunder signed two more players for the 2007 season, goalkeeper Nicolas Platter and Woodbury native Sasha Gotsmanov. Platter played six games for the Thunder last year, and signed a three-year deal; Gotsmanov was a three-time All-State selection in Minnesota, and was last in Colorado's development program. The Thunder are hoping that the former Royal can bring some scoring to a team that struggled in that department last year.... the St. Paul Saints signed two lefties, both Minnesota natives. Jason Cierlik (Brooklyn Park and MSU - Mankato) spent three seasons in Baltimore's minor league system before returning to the Northern League last season, and Brian Whinnery (St. Paul, and St. Thomas) was with the Saints last year. Whinnery has an impressive Minnesota baseball resume, as he was the winning pitcher for two consecutive state championships with Cretin-Derham Hall, and was the winning pitcher for St. Thomas's only NCAA Division III title..... I think we can officially declare the Minnesota Ripknees official website dead in the water, but some sleuthing discovered that the team beat Detroit twice last weekend, 120-119 in overtime on Saturday, then 100-94 on Sunday. Say what you want about the Ripknees - and I've said plenty - but there's a decent chance they're the best basketball team in Minnesota right now.... maybe only behind the Winona State Warriors, who beat Southwest State on the weekend to claim the NSIC championship. More importantly, they've now tied the Division II record, with 52 consecutive wins.... the Minnesota Whitecaps made the championship game of the Western Women's Hockey League, which was theoretically played on Sunday, though there's no score listed anywhere on the internet. We are at this point forced to consider the possibility that the league went out of business on the day of the championship game, which would be a darn shame.

Gopher Hockey: I think he's here about six more weeks

The focus of John Buccigross's wonderful weekly ESPN column this week was an interview with Gophers defenseman Erik Johnson. It's an interesting read for those of us in Gopher Nation.

You probably already know Johnson's story - big defenseman from Holy Angels and the USNTDP. Drafted first overall in last season's NHL draft by the St. Louis Blues, the first Minnesotan ever selected first. Not yet nineteen years old.

He has had what I would call a decent freshman season - on the second PP unit, in the second defensive pairing, 3-17--20. Thinks he can slalom around everyone on the ice and score sometimes - he can't. Sometimes appears to be wishing strenuously that he could play forward instead of defense. I have made many jokes this year about Johnson jumping over the boards in place of a winger, then rushing back to the defensive end during a TV timeout and pushing the goaltender out of the net in hopes of replacing the netminder as well.

Is he ready to step in on St. Louis's blue line tomorrow night? Probably not, but he is good enough to get out of college hockey after this year. I think another year with the Gophers - paired with Alex Goligoski and playing 30 minutes a night - would do him a world of good, but that's partially wishful thinking on my part. He can play in the NHL. He's good enough.

Johnson agrees with me, it's clear. He does not actually write the words "I'm leaving school after this year" anywhere in his email exchange with Bucci, but there is nothing he could have said apart from that quote that would make it any plainer. "Next year, I really think I need to make the jump in competition in order to keep developing the way I want to," says Johnson. Those are the words of a guy who will be in the AHL next fall.

That's not the interesting part, though. We all knew that Johnson would almost certainly be gone after one season. Here's the interesting quote:

"I think here at Minnesota, I could have been used more effectively in the system, so that has been frustrating. "

At this point, I am leaning on my hand and saying sarcastically, "Oh, go on Erik, do tell. Do tell us how you could have been used more effectively."

I'm going to make an assumption here: I assume that Johnson would have liked to have played more offensively. (I assume this because of his tendency to unilaterally decide to play right wing, often at inopportune times.)

What exactly did you want, Erik? To see more ice time? Because there's two fellows named Goligoski and Vannelli (you know, the team captain) that were kind of ahead of you in line. Alex has played 111 games now. Mike has played 144. And if you look at the stats, both of them had similar freshman seasons to, well, yours.

Did you want more power play time? More time to shoot the puck? 'Cause I gotta tell you, Erik, you've got a cannon of a shot, but with the accuracy of someone trying to do calligraphy with a ketchup bottle. You've taken 103 shots, more than anyone else on the team, and you've scored three goals. This puts your percentage just a hair above those who haven't scored this year.

Maybe you just wanted more freedom, more leeway to pinch in and carry the puck and try to make plays. I can understand why you'd want this. No doubt you've been the best player on the ice for so long that you assume you can do this without repercussions. And maybe you can, sometimes, but I've seen far too many 2-on-1 goals against Minnesota this season, and far too many freshman mistakes, to be willing to give you free rein. You're simply not good enough yet. When you are in game #104 of your college career, not game #34, you will know this.

Anyway, it's interesting, that on a team currently wracked with inconsistency, that someone on the team would stand up and say, "You know what our problem is? Not letting me do what I want."

It can't be a good sign.

Minnesota Wild: Quick Reactions to Tonight

Random thoughts about tonight's 4-3 shootout loss to the Canucks...

-- Kim Johnsson scored on the same day as a lunar eclipse? Sometimes, you can't make these things up.

-- I don't think I'll ever forgive Justin Morneau for wearing a Todd Bertuzzi jersey shirt on the field for the Twins' division title celebration last season. You may be the MVP, Justin, and you may be Canadian, but you need to understand a few things here...

-- I thought this game was over at the end of the second - the Wild had a power play for the last 1:45 of the second period, had three great chances, and didn't score on any of them. On the road, against Vancouver, if you don't score in that situation that's pretty much all she wrote. Credit the Wild for coming back after that.

-- It is a fact that the Wild are terrible in the faceoff circle (47.5% as a team). It is taken as an article of faith that this is one of the main things wrong with Minnesota. Here's my question: let's say the Wild got their percentage up to exactly average, right at 50%. It'd be hard to complain about being average. But there are what, 50-70 faceoffs per night? If they improved this two and a half percent, this would translate into one, maybe two more faceoff wins per night. I don't see one faceoff win every night making the difference between a Stanley Cup run and a first-round exit for the Wild, I really don't.

-- Speaking of faceoffs, it's noteworthy that three of the four best teams in the Western Conference are Phoenix, Edmonton, and St. Louis. Though I don't expect it to be a perfect correlation from faceoff wins to wins in the standings, for all the to-do about faceoffs in the Minnesota press lately, you might expect it to be a little more closely related.

-- Dave Lee and Dan Terhaar would be neck-and-neck in any "homer announcing" horse race, that's for sure.

-- I'll never understand how Martin Skoula doesn't get scratched more often in favor of Petteri Nummelin or Kurtis Foster.

-- Dominic Moore arrived in Minnesota, and I assumed that this meant that Risebrough and Lemaire had decided that it was the end of the line for Wyatt Smith. Since Moore arrived, he's played once, and Smith has played twice, despite the fact that Lemaire spoke in glowing terms about Moore after his one appearance. I guess all this proves is that I don't understand Jacques Lemaire.

-- On the other hand, Moore's arrival gave the Strib's Michael Russo the easiest column idea ever: returning to the scene of Todd Bertuzzi's assault on Moore's brother, Steve.

-- To comment further on the article, it serves as a reminder for all of us. People noticed that Buffalo-Ottawa fight a couple of weeks ago, held it up as a generally positive thing for the NHL. But the same culture that begat that entertaining fight also gave us three excuses for human beings: Marc Crawford, who incited Vancouver by calling Moore's hit on Markus Naslund a "cheap shot" even though it wasn't; Brad May, who put a bounty on Moore's head like a pretentious, posturing dirtbag; and of course Bertuzzi, who ended a guy's career, cost him his livelihood, all in the name of playing the tough guy, and who deserves every bad thing that happens to him for the rest of his life.

-- I never thought there'd be anyone on the Canucks I hated more than Matt Cooke, but then you had those three - although each of them's gone from the Vancouver organization now.

-- Can you bet on whether Wild games will go to shootouts? If so, I'm going to start putting $5 every night on "shootout."

-- Petteri Nummelin can move his hands faster than the speed of light. Mikko Koivu can do so at the approximate speed of smell.

-- Mike Greenlay butchered the report on the standings - even if the Wild had won the shootout (thus tying the teams at 80 points apiece), Vancouver would have held onto the division lead because they have played one fewer game than Minnesota.

Random: 35 Seconds of Fame (Anonymous Division)

Some people will be famous for 15 minutes. Apparently, I'll be famous for 222 words, and those without my name published on them.

I don't usually get to read the print version of the Star Tribune, so it took a phone call from home for me to learn about this: apparently, my blog appeared in Sunday's "Daily Buzz", a regular feature in the Star Tribune's sports section.

They published the blog's address but not my name. I'm not sure what that says about the internet age.

Anyway, I suppose ultimately this is barely a step up from the Letters section, but it's still a bit of a thrill for my opinion to be unexpectedly cited in the state's largest newspaper.

Minnesota: On to State!

Even seventeen inches of snow couldn't keep the Minnesota High School Hockey tournament down for long. The section finals are complete, the games are finished, and the following sixteen teams will be appearing on Fox Sports Net thirty years from now to speak in glowing terms about how much their trip to state meant to them:

AA: Rochester Century, Woodbury, Hill-Murray, Blaine, Burnsville, Edina, Grand Rapids, Roseau
A: Albert Lea, Duluth Marshall, St. Thomas Academy, Little Falls, Blake, Orono, Hermantown, Warroad

Commentary:
-- Burnsville is probably the most delirious with joy this evening, as they beat seemingly-invincible Holy Angels in the section 5AA final.
-- The top four teams in the ratings - Holy Angels, Moorhead, Roseville, and White Bear Lake - will all be watching the tournament on TV this year.
-- Roseau won 23 games this season and lost only two, but both losses were in meetings with Moorhead. They avenged that with a 1-0 win in the Section 8AA final.
-- Roseville went down to White Bear Lake in the section 3AA semifinals; proving that nobody knows anything, the Bears turned around and lost to Hill-Murray.
-- It's nice to see the AA finals include only one private school. The A finals did worse, with odds-on favorite St. Thomas Academy making it through, along with Blake.
-- Roseau and Warroad will both make the trip to St. Paul. I suppose that was Warroad's intention in dropping down a class, but that sentence still doesn't feel right to type.
-- Hermantown's dream season continues unabated: still no losses, and a section 7A title. They're three games from a virtually perfect year.
-- Take a look at a map of Minnesota. Section off the state, using interstates 94 and 35 as general borders. Include the metro area in the Eastern half. For the 173rd year in a row, all of the state hockey teams are from schools that lie east of the split. Seriously, we might as well put every other school in the South Dakota HS Athletic Association.
-- We won't include private schools in this comparison, because they're cheaters: Congratulations to Roseau (10-12 enrollment: 325) and Grand Rapids (877), both of which made the AA state playoffs despite being smaller than Albert Lea (896), the largest school in the A finals. Roseau is, in fact, the smallest public school in either the AA or A playoffs. One can only hope they have the chance to beat Burnsville (2,428 - almost eight times the size of Roseau HS). Warroad, who decided to drop down to Class A, has an enrollment of 334, nine more than Roseau.

Congratulations to all of the finalists. Have a good trip to state, and try to go easy on your poor folks, who have to try to police all of you little hooligans.

The State tournament begins Wednesday, March 7. Games begin at 11pm at the Xcel Energy Center. The A championship is Saturday, March 10, at 12noon; the AA championship is at 7pm the same day.

NHL: Inside the Standings

(UPDATE: Below I refer to "my" system... clearly I did not invent this one. I didn't mean to insinuate that I did. I just needed to distinguish it from all the others.)

A few years ago, the NHL went away from the time-honored system of awarding two points in the standings for a win, one for a tie, and none for a loss. For a few years, the standings sprouted an extra column, giving teams ridiculous records, like 25-39-13-5. This was fun for actuaries, but almost nobody else. Two years ago, the NHL gave us a shootout, which eliminated the "tie" column, confusing everyone who was still used to the old W-L-T system.

The old system wasn't the best way of doing things. Adding the overtime loss didn't help, either. And there are three things that are wrong with the current system:

1. Some games are worth a total of two points for both teams, some are worth three. This certainly doesn't make any sense.
2. If your team wins 11-0, it counts for two points; if they dump the puck 479 times and get through overtime at 0-0, and then win the shootout, it counts for two points. This also clearly doesn't make sense.
3. A team like Tampa Bay (10-1 in the shootout) has won four fewer regulation games than a team like Carolina (0-4 in the shootout) and yet is seven points ahead of the 'Canes in the standings. This is undoubtedly absurd.

Occasionally a media outlet or two will publish a recap of how a team would be doing if we were playing under the old system, if we got rid of the shootout and the fourth standings column and had ties again. So I looked into the Western Conference standings, where the current playoff teams are Nashville, Detroit, Anaheim, Dallas, Vancouver, Minnesota, San Jose, and Calgary.

If we reverted to the old system, by counting shootout wins and losses to ties, the Western Conference playoff teams would be (drumroll please)....

Nashville, Detroit, Anaheim, Dallas, Vancouver, Minnesota, San Jose, and Calgary.

Okay, fine. I decided to devise my own system to address the issues above. My system gives teams that win in regulation three points, with teams that win in overtime or the shootout two points and teams that lose in OT or the shootout a solitary point. This addresses problem number 1 by making every game worth three points, and addresses problem number 2 by giving regulation winners one more point than shootout winners.

And problem #3? Under the new system, Tampa Bay would have 102 points, and Carolina would have...uh...99.

So this system isn't perfect. But maybe it doesn't need to be - after all, if we're going to have a shootout, those wins need to be worth something, and Tampa should be rewarded for those wins.

I also ran the numbers for a couple of other random systems - one that would based on the current system, but rank teams according to the number of points they've accumulated beyond the number that their opponents have accumulated; and one that would award five for a regulation win, four for an overtime win, three for a shootout win, two for a shootout loss, one for an overtime loss, and zero for a regulation loss.

All in all, in the Western Conference, the playoff picture didn't change no matter what point system was used - there's just too big a gap between 8th and 9th place. The big differences were in seeding - under each of the four other sets of standings, the Wild were firmly mired in 8th place. This makes sense - they have ten shootout wins when no other team in the conference has more than six.

Over in the Eastern Conference, things are tighter (five points separates sixth-place Atlanta from tenth-place Toronto) and so the results were a little more dynamic. My proposed system would boot Atlanta out of the playoff picture and move everybody else up a spot, including 9th-place Carolina. If we were operating under the old system, the Hurricanes and Toronto would both be in (Carolina would be all the way up to fourth), with Atlanta and the Islanders out of the playoff places. The other two systems mentioned also replace Atlanta with Carolina.

Atlanta is, in fact, a strange case, along with Montreal. They are the only teams in the NHL right now that are in the playoff places despite the fact that their opponents have more points than they do (Atlanta's -2, Montreal is -1). They have given up more goals (206 for the Thrashers, 200 for the Canadiens) than they have scored (196 and 191), again the only two teams that can say that. And the two share something in common with Tampa Bay and Minnesota, the other two teams we've mentioned as notable, that no one else shares - all four have lost more games in regulation than they have won in regulation, the only four playoff-placed teams in the NHL that have done so.

These four teams have clearly been the biggest beneficiaries of the current point system.

On the flip side, there are a few in each conference that have not adapted so well. San Jose has won more games in regulation than any team in the league save Detroit, yet is stuck tied for sixth in the Western conference because they have played only four overtime games (winning six points in these.) Carolina and Toronto have both won more games than they have lost in regular time, but since both stink in the extra session (the Hurricanes are 4-7 overall, the Leafs 4-9) they're both currently out of the playoff picture.

Ultimately, the standings need to reflect the order in which the teams deserve to be placed, and that has to be based strictly on game results. Does Tampa Bay deserve to be above Carolina? Probably. Does Atlanta? Probably not. The current system over-rewards teams that play a lot of overtime games, and especially benefits teams that win a lot in overtime. It awards different numbers of points based on the game, which may be fair for a single game but is not fair in terms of the league standings.

Moving to my system (again - three for a regulation win, two for an overtime win, one for an overtime loss, nothing for a regulation loss) helps address these issues. It's not perfect, to be sure, but it helps.

So I leave you with the standings, under this suggested system; given some of the stories I've written above, you can check these out, and decide for yourself.

(As of 3/1/2007)
EASTERN CONFERENCE
1. Buffalo - 63 GP, 116 Pts
2. New Jersey - 64, 116
3. Ottawa - 64, 114
4. Tampa Bay - 66, 102
5. Pittsburgh - 63, 100
6. Carolina - 66, 99
7. Montreal - 66, 98
8. New York Islanders - 64, 97
9. Atlanta - 65, 96
10. Toronto - 64, 95
11. New York Rangers - 64, 90
12. Florida - 65, 88
13. Boston - 63, 83
14. Washington - 65, 79
15. Philadelphia - 64, 58

WESTERN CONFERENCE
1. Detroit - 64 GP, 125 Pts
2. Nashville - 65, 124
3. Anaheim - 65, 116
4. San Jose - 64, 114
5. Calgary - 64, 109
6. Dallas - 63, 108
7. Vancouver - 64, 103
8. Minnesota - 65, 99
9. Colorado - 65, 93
9. Edmonton - 65, 93
11. St. Louis - 64, 85
12. Phoenix - 64, 77
13. Columbus - 64, 75
14. Chicago - 64, 73
15. Los Angeles - 64, 70

Perfect? Nope. Not by a long shot. Better? I think so.

Gopher Hockey: Number 12

1953.
1954.
1970.
1975.
1981.
1983.
1988.
1989.
1992.
1997.
2006.

2007.

This is the MacNaughton Cup.

It is awarded to the WCHA league champion.

It is the hardest trophy to win in college hockey.

And this year, it did not have to travel far.

This will be the twelfth maroon banner on the west end of the rink. This will be a nice compliment to the 13 maroon banners for tournament championships, the six maroon banners for being national runners-up, and of course, the six gold banners commemorating national titles.

Those are some good-looking rafters, and tonight, they got a lot prettier.

Minnesota: Still snowing...

A week ago today, the last of the winter show had melted off, and we appeared to be on the fast track for spring.

Then we got a foot of snow last weekend, and we saw sights we hadn't seen for a couple of years: the piles of snow on street corners that actually blocked your vision of the cross street. Kids outside playing king of the hill in parking lots across the straight. People heading to the corner store on cross-country skis. It was fun to watch, if you were like me and stayed inside the whole time.

Now, as I write this, it appears to be snowing at the rate of approximately an inch per hour. This would not be remarkable except that it has been doing this for about fourteen straight hours. We're headed for an impressive total; all indications are that there are ten inches on the ground already, with five more or so to come. Shocking as it seems, this is rare for us - if we do hit the magical 15-inch mark, it would be only the fifth time in local history. We haven't done it since it happened twice in the second-to-last week of January in 1982 (when 37 inches fell in less than a week). The foot we're almost guaranteed to get will mark only the eleventh time we've exceeded that amount, as well.

I mention this so that I can quote myself, quote what I wrote about spring last autumn:

Spring, of course, is a season for manic depressives. The weather warms up, you sense the relaxation of summer coming up, and then Mother Nature dumps another foot of snow on you. Then tax day sneaks up and punches you in the chest, and you start thinking about staying in bed until Flag Day. Spring is the hardest season to get through. People don't move to Arizona to avoid winter, they move to avoid having to wait for summer to come back. If hockey season started in the summer we'd never even get the indoor rinks flooded, we'd just make the kids play roller hockey, and if it started in the spring we'd lay down in front of the Zamboni.

Implications for the local sports scene are following the usual drill. The Citadel, those Charleston wusses, are not going to make it to the Dairy Queen Classic this weekend. We can only imagine that they're still smarting from the beatdown the Gopher baseball team laid on them last weekend, in their own backyard. Minnesota will take on St. Thomas instead in an exhibition. Apparently, Ole Miss and Arkansas did manage to make it into town, so the rest of the tournament may go on as scheduled.

Meanwhile, the state high school swimming and diving tournament got condensed to one day instead of three. The Gopher football team opened spring practice - inside, of course. And half the section hockey finals that were supposed to take place tonight got canceled 0n fact, only three sections (5A, 6A, and 7A) are listed as playing tonight. Most of the rest are scheduled for Saturday, with a few still sticking to Friday dates.

For those of you who aren't well versed in Minnesota weather lore, it's an article of faith that the state boys' basketball tournament brings with it a gigantic blizzard. This year's tournament is scheduled for March 21-24. I've already read some of the cautionary tales about this myth: apparently, it's actually four times more likely for it to be 50+ degrees and sunny.

But after the last week, and the 25 inches of snow we've received, I'd have to say - that doesn't seem likely at all.