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UMD’s Anna Klein continued behind the net after putting the first goal of Friday’s 4-0 victory over St. Cloud State past Sanni Ahola. Anneke Linser looked for a rebound, but was injured shortly after this and missed the rest of the series. Photos by John Gilbert.

What have we come to with our professional sports franchises in Minnesota? Part of our “Minnesota Nice” has been the love affair we have with our sports teams, and with their players who best adapt and fit into our culture.

Like all sports fans, I have certain players I enjoy watching, and in my case I often have gotten to meet, interview and know a bit as a journalist. The Minnesota Wild are a perfect example. You won’t find a more personable, friendly, responsible player in the NHL than Mikko Koivu. In the running might be Eric Staal, who built and outdoor rink at his home and goes out and skates with his kids and the neighborhood kids. He’s from Thunder Bay, as well, so his folks can come down and watch him play. Perfect fit. Another perfect fit is goaltender Devan Dubnyk.

Dubnyk, who had proven to be among the NHL’s elite goaltenders, had problems last season with an injury, and then his wife had a serious malady and he yielded the starting job to Alex Stalock so he could withdraw and spend time with his wife and kids. He came back ready to go, but he and Stalock are a rare and perfect combination, pulling for each other and fully supportive.

So on the scene comes Bill Guerin, a pretty good winger in his playing days, and the Wild and the Twin Cities media gushed over him. He played at Boston College, which meant he was a big rival of Gopher hockey and has no reason to know about our hockey culture. He trades Eric Staal, first line center and a big, rangy player. HE tells Koivu he’s not offering him a contract, hoping he’d retire and go home to Finland. Koivu has lost a step, but he’s still the perfect captain, the perfect team player, responsible defensively and a strong face-off man. He didn’t retire. He didn’t want to retire. He signed with Columbus for the upcoming season.

Goaltender Emma Soderberg thought she covered the puck but when she didn’t she had enough help to stop Linn Melotindos.

Guerin then traded Dubnyk to San Jose. Three men, just Monopoly board pieces to Guerin perhaps, but three solid citizens who resp[ected and fit into the Minnesota hockey culture. The word was the Wild needed to add bigger players, so they drafted a highly skilled young man on the first round. He may be great, but he’s 5-foot-9. Staal and Koivu, both 6-4, are gone.

That goes back to the Vikings, an NFL franchise that struck it rich when a reserve quarterback named Case Keenum stepped in three years ago and with great instincts and spontaneity, he ran and passed the Vikings to an 11-3 season and the playoffs. They won a huge playoff game over New Orleans when Keenum arched a long bomb that Stefan Diggs made a leaping catch on from two defenders, landed on the sideline, and ran into the end zone for the winning touchdown. That’s relevant, because last week a huge contest was held for all Vikings fans to pick their greatest memory from all Vikings game in history, and that Minneapolis Miracle won. So they sent Diggs away, and that’s OK because he was an attitude problem. But they also cut Case Keenum — who fit in perfectly with the Vikings but coach Mike Zimmer didn’t want anything but a stand-still pocket quarterback, never mind that all the best young teams have scramblers.

UMD freshman Clara Van Wieren, far left, scored her first of two goals Saturday for a 4-0 lead in the second period.

Now we come to last week, and the Minnesota Twins, caught up to the strangling point with analytics governing all their decisions, decide to cut Eddie Rosario adrift. No trade, nothing. He’s gone. A free agent instead of my favorite Twins player to watch. In the analytical mess, Rosario was an instinctive, improvising player. If the pitch was shoulder high and three inches outside, if he liked it, he would hit a line drive off the left-centerfield wall. HE gambled on the bases. A team that was ultra conservative remained so, except when Eddie Rosario was involved, making great catches, throwing out baserunners with perfect strikes from left field, daring to take an extra base that could put the Twins in position to steal a win. He’s gone. The best reason to watch a Twins game, to drive from Duluth to Minneapolis and buy a ticket, is gone.

Oh, sure, they still have Nelson Cruz, their ageless designated hitter. But wait! They cut him, too, into free agency. While they still could offer him a contract and sign him up again, nothing is guaranteed.
As a sports fan with a considerable history, then, I am left without my biggest reason to watch a Wild game, or a Twins game, or a Vikings game!

Gabbie Hughes (17) sweeps behind the net after scoring for the first UMD goal of Saturday night’s 5-1 victory.

Men go, women pause

The UMD men’s hockey team continues on its torrid season-opening run at the Omaha pod for NCHC hockey teams. The Bulldogs have a week and a half left before calling the first phase of the season over, but they still have some huge games to go. On Thursday, for example, UMD faces No. 1 North Dakota, in a game with national No. 1 overtones.

Scott Sandelin found Ryan Fanti and put him in goal to replace the graduated Hunter Shepard, and Fanti opened with three straight victories, including a 2-1 victory over Denver, when the Pioneers outshot UMD 18-1 in the second period, and he held the Bulldogs in the game until two close-order power-play goals in the third period vaulted UMD to the larceny. The large quantity of returnees anchor a strong UMD team, and Sandelin took Wyatt Kaiser, his prize defenseman recruit from Andover High School, and installed him as a raw freshman to quarterback the power play. Scott Perunovich is gone, having signed a contract with the St. Louis Blues as Hobey Baker winner, and Kaiser has done an outstanding job from the start fitting into a prominent role.

Meanwhile, the UMD women continued their roller-coaster season — sweep at MSU-Mankato, then getting swept by Minnesota at AMSOIL Arena, and then last weekend, pretty well cruising past St. Cloud State 4-0 and 5-1 at AMSOIL.

That’s a pattern that can be frustrating for UMD fans. Naomi Rogge scored two goals ain the second period, at 1:19 and 3:03, to stretch the first-period lead created by Anna Klein, and freshman Clara Van Wieren scored to complete the 4-0 first game, while Swedish junior Emma Soderberg notched the shutout. St. Cloud State managed only 11 shots in the game, however, not a real test.

Game 2 was scoreless through a period, then Gabbie Hughes cruised by the right edge of the crease just as a rebound landed at her feet and she rapped it in. Klein followed two minutes late with her sixth goal in six games, igniting a three-goal splurge in two and a half minutes. Rogge notched her fourth goal of the season 44 seconds later, and Van Wieren scored on a deflection at 9:47 to make it 4-0. At that point, UMD had outshot the Huskies 34-6.

Coach Maura Crowell decided to give Soderberg a break and play JoJo Chobak in the third period, and, sure enough, St. Cloud State came to life, getting 12 shots in the third period after only nine through the first two. Jenniine Nylund broke through, finding a wide rebound on her stick deep on the right and rifling it behind Chobak with 3:43 remaining to cut it to 4-1.’

Van Wieren, from Okemos, Michigan, got free in the slot and scored at 17:54 for the Bulldogs to complete the 5-1 victory.

Afterward, I had to ask Crowell how she planned to prepare for this weekend’s series at No. 1 Wisconsin, because the Badgers had just had their big weekend against Minnesota cancelled by COVID-19, and Crowell said: “We haven’t heard any more from Wisconsin, so we’re going ahead and planning to play, until we hear otherwise.”

Otherwise came when the Badgers informed UMD that the COVID-19 pandemic has knocked out enough players that this weekend’s series is cancelled, too. That means the rest of the season, which hasn’t yet been scheduled by the WCHA, is up for grabs. But for calendar year 2020, the UMD men and the UMD women will not be back playing in AMSOIL Arena.

So check out the accompanying photos — they might be the evidence of the final games we’ll see in Duluth for a while.

St. Cloud's Jenniina Nylund found a way to get the puck past backup UMD goaltender Jojo Chobak in the third period Saturday.

Hamilton back for finale

World driving champion Lewis Hamilton is expected back in his front-running Mercedes for this weekend’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix — the final race of this tortured Formula 1 season. A week after Roman Grosjean escaped serious injury when his car went off the tracks, pierced an ARMCO barrier and went on through it, bursting into flames on the first lap of the Bahrain Grand Prix. The car broke in half as it was engulfed in a roaring fire, and somehow Grosjean got his harnesses undone, extricated himself, and came leaping up on the Armco and to safety as the safety crew extinguished his burning legs.

Hamilton won that race, but he was stricken with COVID-19 and had to withdraw. The Mercedes team worked out a deal with Williams to use George Russell, a 22-year-old Briton, in Hamilton’s car. He had no illusions, and was just hoping to stay within view of Valtteri Bottas, Hamilton’s teammate. Instead, Russel surged to the front, made a stirring pass on Bottas, and dominated the race despite a couple of safety-car incursions.

His storybook day was fouled up when the Mercedes crew made a couple of horrible mistakes. First, Russell’s radio malfunctioned. Then he came into the pits at the same time as Bottas, and in the confusion, the crew put two front tires meant for Bottas on Russell’s car. He went back out, knew the compound and the style were wrong, and tried to make his way back to the front, when a tire got punctured. He finished ninth, but, more importantly, showed that he could run with the best. Or ahead of the best.

The theory that Hamilton is good but has a superior car gained more evidence when /Russell, with only two days to get into the car, set the fastest race lap and could have run away with the victory — just as Hamilton has so frequently done.

As it was, Sergio Perez won the race, with Esteban Ocon second, and Lance Stroll third in the matching team car to Perez. Two guys who never get to the podium finished first and third. Fantastic ending to a bizarre season, and next year should provide even more off-season controversy as teams fight now for the services of George Russell.