SPRINGFIELD… I was spending the afternoon with my father today, and as has been his autumn Sunday ritual for as long as I can remember, he had football on TV. NFL football. I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to it, choosing instead to watch a show in another room on the Travel Channel that was listing the best 101 places to eat in the USA. Most of it was not based around good nutritional choices, but featured oversized sandwich fare, BBQ places, and a lot of fried food and other items smothered in high-calorie sauces and the like. I do get a charge out of shows like these, though.

I went back and forth from one end of the house to the other to check on him and see how he was and catch a few glimpses of the game action. On one of those checks, I caught a blurb on the screen that mentioned something about the NFL experimenting with changing the width of the goal posts at the 2015 Pro Bowl. Well, it’s not something I have much interest in, and I presume they are talking about narrowing them rather than widening them. The Pro Bowl by and large has been as worthless a sports event as I can think of in my lifetime. So why not?

But this got me thinking. If the league eventually decides it’s worth changing the width of the posts, how would that impact some long-held kicking records? Would old and retired veterans who held personal records of some sort ever see them challenged? Would younger players coming in be discouraged by the thought that they may never set any? Would MLB change the distance of the base paths to increase base stealing? Or would that be a relative, proportional change? The shorter the distance to run, the shorter the distance to throw as well? Neither am I interested in a record book full of asterisks.

I started thinking about hockey. A specific change I hear get debated from time to time is changing the dimensions of the goal. Before I kick in here, I am dead set against that. The cage has been four feet by six feet forever (as far as I know). Above and beyond that, all modern goaltending and scoring records have been set using that standard. The debate has largely been centered around some in the game’s desire to increase scoring. I believe they falsely support that desire by stating that a lot of fans would enjoy more scoring in the game and that their game experience would be more positive as well. I even heard one proponent speaking of going to a broomball-sized goal!   

I don’t know about you, but I have seen tons of games that ended 1-0 or 3-2, and they were pretty exciting. I have seen 9-7 games that were boring and poorly played. Was the Chinese fire drill hockey of the eighties more exciting than a well-played, highly defensive tilt of today’s game? In the end, I think the emphasis on well-played, well-officiated games would trump all else—that and perhaps helping to increase fan understanding of the subtleties involved in the sport. The smarts required to play hockey today at the upper levels has never been higher. Don’t dumb it down by making unnecessary changes to long-held standards. And the broomball guy? Don’t get me started…

THE MINNESOTA WILD ARE bouncing along right now and currently find themselves on the outside looking in as far as the playoffs go. On the one hand, they have a couple of games in hand on the clubs ahead of them, and considering it is mid-December no real separation has occurred in the standings yet. The Wild haven’t done anything to really ruin their chances of making the Stanley Cup tourney yet, but they haven’t shown that they are going to make that hard push that will establish them as a playoff force, which is the way they left fans of the club feeling when they exited last year’s tournament.

Optimism abounded at the start of this season, only to leave quite a bit of the fan base frustrated by the current condition of the team. After doing a bit of digging, perhaps the team is right where their stats say they should be. They have had uneven goaltending, scoring, defense, and special teams play. The team is currently mid-pack in scoring at 2.79 GPG, good for 15th. They are 12th in shots on goal per game and 15th in scoring percentage relative to SOG. They are 6th in total goals against but have played the fewest games in the league, along with Florida. They are tied for 9th with Florida for GAA at 2.44 per game. They are alone in save percentage per game in the 24th spot at .903 (Kuemper and Backstrom).

And while the power play has shown some life recently, they are 25th with 12 PP goals total and 27th in PP percentage at 13.0. But the penalty kill has been remarkable, coming in at 3rd in the league with an 87.4 PK percentage. The club has shown some strength in faceoff wins in the past but is currently 17th with a 49.6 percentage. At 16-11-1 they have increased their winning percentage recently, but are 5th in the Central Division and currently in 4th in the Western Conference Wildcard standings, with only the top two teams getting playoff positions.  

The NHL mumps mini-epidemic has hit the Wild. They have dealt with several injuries and are challenged on several fronts. Perhaps the team is getting all the bumps in the road out of the way now and will begin to turn it up shortly. The team needs for the goaltending to improve and to steal a game here and there. The overall scoring has been inconsistent. The team had been counting on more from Pominville and Vanek, to name a couple of players. And some of the younger players the team had been looking for more from haven’t lit the lamp as hoped. Granlund, Coyle, and Haula have not been amassing points thus far.

The team has a very tough three-game stretch on its plate with the Hawks, Bruins, and surprising Predators coming up. These will be the most important three games of this next third of the season, and it’s time to step up… PEACE


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