News & Articles

MOOSE LAKE… The NHL Minnesota Wild placed net minder Josh Harding on waivers Monday morning. If Harding makes it through the waiver process without another club claiming him, they are hoping to assign him to the Iowa Wild to help him regain his conditioning and playing form. However, the move could also mean the end of the line for Harding’s 12 years with the Wild. For those who don’t know, Harding was a 2002 Wild draftee, kicked off his playing career with the Wild’s Houston Aeros in the 2004-05 season, and got his first NHL call-up in 2006. He continued to be shuttled between the AHL and NHL clubs, enjoying some successes but not being able to stick.

In September of 2010 he was injured during the preseason and would miss the entire 2010-11 campaign. The team re-signed him that next summer, though. In 2011-12 he played in 34 games and showed enough promise to earn a three-year contract, signing that in June 2012. In late November of that year, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He continued forward, and after Niklas Backstrom was injured right before the start of game one of the 2013 Stanley Cup playoff round-one series against the Chicago Blackhawks, Harding took over. The Wild would go on to lose the series to the eventual Stanley Cup champion Hawks, but Hards was lauded for his efforts, winning the Bill Masterton trophy, named after the late Minnesota NorthStar player.

Harding started off the 2013-14 season by playing well enough that he pushed Backstrom out of the number-one spot. By mid-December he had stats good enough to earn him top-three status in the league with his play. In late December he began to experience health issues related to his MS medication. Those were eventually fixed, but he didn’t play again. This past summer his training and MS situation were both going favorably, and then right before training camp he got into some type of altercation with a teammate at a workout, kicked a wall, and broke his foot. The team then suspended him.

Monday, Wild GM Chuck Fletcher explained that the team felt that with Harding having not played for 11 months, they needed to get him some game time in, and that they couldn’t carry three goalies on the 23-man roster for the big club, so the only thing left to do was to activate Hards and then put him on waivers and hope he sneaks through. There is the danger of a desperate team claiming him, but that’s probably a calculated risk. I know anything can happen, but I believe in this case the other 29 teams will realize the investment that the team and Hards have in each other and the special circumstances involved and let him pass through.

Personally, I hope he can regain his fall of 2013 form, which would elevate him right past Backstrom and current number one Darcy Kuemper. The team needs that because I have concerns about Kuemps’ overall experience and body of work factors as the season ramps upward to even more important games, and Backs looks like a shell of his former self at this point. Hards put the club behind the eight ball with his field goal attempt on a cinder block wall. Let’s hope he can get things right again and soon…

ON MONDAY EVE THE Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto enshrined former players Rob Blake, Dominik Hasek, Peter Forsberg, and former NorthStar Mike Modano. They also inducted former official Bill McCreary and the late former coach Pat Burns. The induction of the late Coach Burns is what has me hot under the collar towards the Hall’s voters. I was a huge fan and supporter of Coach Burns. The passion he had for the game and the teams he coached were probably unrivaled in the game. It didn’t hurt that he also coached my favorite Canadiens at one time as well.

When the HHOF voting was being conducted for the 2010 class, there was quite a movement to ensure Burns would get in, as he was on the last leg of his battle with cancer, a battle he would eventually lose. He died on November 19, 2010, shortly after the 2010 ceremonies were held in Toronto. Burns was a former policeman in Gatineau, QE. He then got into coaching and won a Quebec Major Junior Hockey League championship with the Hull Olympique. He went to two Stanley Cup finals, winning one with the New Jersey Devils. He won the Jack Adams award with three different clubs, the only coach to ever do so.

Burns had the credentials to get into the Hall the moment he stepped away from the game in 2005 to deal with his health battle. So why did the voters not do the right thing and vote him in when they knew he was on the end of his journey here? At various times in my life, I have believed that I lived before this life, and that I will be back someday in another. I have believed in the afterlife, and I have waged internal battles to not believe in anything of the sort. Today I’m just all about the here and now, and here is what it is saying to me: Patty Burns got screwed! Yes! Oui!

Screw all this BS that Pat is watching from above tonight and he is happy! Screw all of these statements that Pat is right here with us tonight and he is proud! No, he is not! He is gone, dead and buried in the cold hard ground, and doesn’t realize S-H-I-T! And you pompous bastards who didn’t vote for him that year so he could have realized his day before he left us should be proud! He is not watching your rubber chicken dinner, fancy speech-givin’ event from some cloud up in the sky!

What could it have hurt to give this fellow his due while he was still here to enjoy it and share it with his family, friends, former players, and colleagues? It would have hurt nothing! It would only have meant that some deserving fellow, in good enough health to enjoy it at another induction class, would have had to wait a mere 12 more months or so. That’s 12 months that Pat Burns didn’t have. Congrats, Coach… PEACE   

Marc Elliott is a sports opinion writer who splits his time between Minnesota and his hometown in Illinois.