SIDE LAKE… This coming Wednesday the Baseball Writers Association of America will announce the results of it’s annual Hall of Fame balloting. And your guess as to who will or won’t get in will assuredly be as good as mine. There are no hard policies or rules as to who gets in, no moral clauses to filter out bad or unethical behavior on or off the field and the BBWAA group itself ranges from traditionalists, baseball purists, statistical numbers geeks to out and out eccentrics. So there. Do you think you have any idea as to who will get in? I don’t.

I think I might have a clue but come Wednesday I will be proven dead wrong. Wrongie Wrongerson will be my new name. The three big names being tossed about this year are baseball pitcher extraordinaire and hockey lover Tom Glavine, fellow Atlanta Brave pitcher Greg Maddux and former Chicago White Sox 1st baseman Frank Thomas. St. Paul native Jack Morris was close last year, and so was Craig Biggio. You have to believe that Glavine and Maddux will be first ballot selections, but this is the baseball hall we are talking about, so who knows. Thomas? Some of the aforementioned categories of voters have not usually taken kindly to designated hitters, middle relief pitchers or closers. The Big Hurt spent more then half of his career at the DH spot. He has some numbers though.

Will Morris finally make it in his last year on the ballot before getting relegated to the Veterans Committee vote? Last year he got 67 percent of the 75 percent of the votes needed to get inducted. What has changed between then and now? Nothing. I don’t think he gets it. There is a lot of popular sentiment going back to his Game 7 performance in the 1991 World Series, and that was certainly a game for the ages. But then some members of the voting group will point out that in 1992, those same Atlanta Braves that he beat in 91’ ran him right out of a WS game as a member of the Toronto Blue Jays. And his career stats, while good, aren’t overwhelming. So, in or out? Really, I don’t have a clue….

THE NHL WINTER CLASSIC was held last week and for me, I thought it was a fabulous event. The accompanying HBO 24/7 series, where the sports network embeds camera crews into the two combatants teams for a month before the tilt, was also, as usual, very good. I enjoyed it. But when it comes to some hockey writers and some TV and radio analysts, in particular, some chaps on the Sirius/XM NHL Home Ice channel, and Hockey Night in Canada radio, well, some of them didn’t think it was that good this time around. I get that and then again I don’t. Have these guys watched so much hockey in their lives that they now feel compelled to critique everything as if they are movie, opera, or dining critics?

They seemed to reserve the most indifferent of their opinions for the 24/7 series. Of those who were critical toward it, they had some common refrains about the “usual” opening scenes talking about playing outdoor hockey as kids, how hard a player had to work to get to the NHL and so on and so forth. So, I feel sorry for these people. Sorry that they feel it necessary to look through the entertainment lens on our game and become critics. Having watched hockey for as long as I have, I can still feel the sting of how little exposure our games has had over the years.

It is still fairly fresh in my mind how non-hockey media blast our game whenever something in the negative occurs. Then they can jump all over the game without any background or merit to a lot of their criticism. I’m not suggesting that these fellows sugarcoat or automatically like anything that is broadcast or printed about the sport or the NHL, I’m just wondering how they might get such a flat, uninspired viewpoint of something that I thoroughly enjoyed.

I get it that there are a lot of things in the game and in the league that can come across as a bit “samey”, to use an expression from my British friends. But while the series and the games themselves might appear to look a bit alike, they aren’t. With different participants each time around, the chance to get behind the scenes and see some new characters is most welcome by me. Long live the Winter Classic and the 24/7 series!

THE MINNESOTA WILD will be taking a 2 game win streak on a road trip this week, starting tomorrow eve out in LA versus the Kings. Their victories Thursday and Saturday over Buffalo and Washington broke a 6 game losing streak. This has made a lot of the Wild faithful quite antsy and calling for the head of Head Coach Mike Yeo. I don’t envy him at this time. Whenever I see the fan base of a team asking for the head of their coach I am inclined to wonder if it is warranted.

Before this season began I took a hard look at the roster and came to the conclusion that this team would be hard pressed to get into the playoffs two years in a row. Not enough scoring, too many young and inexperienced players, and at least half of the veterans weren’t going to be strong offensive contributors. It appeared before camp that Niklas Backstrom would return as the starter and coming off of an off-season surgery, I had questions about where his game would be at.

We know now that Backs has struggled, was replaced in the one spot by Josh Harding who has been out lately due to his battle with MS, the offense has been non-existent at times and the defense and special teams have struggled. In the 6 game loss streak they scored 13 goals while surrendering 26. I don’t confuse Yeo with Scotty Bowman. And if and when the club gets to a 3rd or 4th round of a Cup tourney I don’t believe he will be the guy behind the bench. But right here, right now, the Wild problems aren’t because of the coach, it’s the roster. Compare the Wild individual and team stats to the Duck or the Hawks, and you’ll see exactly what I am saying… PEACE b had anything to play for other

Marc Elliott is a free lance sports opinion writer who splits time between his hometown in Illinois and Minnesota. Elliott grew up in the Twin Cities with many of his childhood neighbors working or playing for the Vikings and Twins. He participated in baseball, football and hockey before settling on hockey as his own number one sport. Elliott recently wrote “The Masked Fan Speaks” column for the Lake County News Chronicle for ten years and was a prominent guest on the former “All Sports” WDSM 710AM in Duluth.