Usually hockey talk in summertime revolves around the amateur NHL draft, but for those craving a little hockey news, we're offering a treat. he off-season Duluth East Greyhounds are finishing up their summer workouts by serving notice who should be the preseason No. 1 team.
   Coach Mike Randolph took a break from directing mites, squirts, peewees and bantams to prepare the ‘Hounds for their climactic annual summer tournament in the Twin Cities. As usual, winning and losing wasn’t as important as getting a look at all his varsity and junior varsity candidates, but it’s hard to ignore winning when that’s all the Greyhounds did!

   The games, at Braemar Arena in Edina this summer, were played in two elongated periods. In the first game of pool play, East and Jefferson were 0-0 at halftime, then East won 6-0. Next came Lakeville South, and East won 4-0. The final game of pool play saw the Greyhounds thrash Benilde 10-1.
   In the playoff round, East trailed Wayzata 2-0, tied it 2-2, fell behind 4-2, tied it 4-4, and wn it in overtime. East faced Eastview in the final, and won 5-2. Garret Worth scored 11 goals in the five games.
   Randolph said junior goaltender Lukan Hanson and three or four forwards had to leave the team to go to Fall Elite League tryouts and missed the last two games, but even that didn’t matter. The JV team lost only to Orono in the final of that portion of the tournament, so Randolph plugged in a few new players and East kept rolling.

   Randolph sent out the top line of Ian Mageau, Worth and Ryder Donovan, and virtually dared everybody to try to stop them, or to match them for firepower. “Mageau and Donovan are such great set-up men, and Worth is a great finisher,” said Randolph. "That line should be worth the price of admission alone, but everybody played well.

   “I’ve got pretty high expectations for this group, because the nucleus is finally juniors and seniors instead of sophomores and juniors. What impressed me the most was our team play. Every player on every line and all the defensemen moved the puck unselfishly, and puck movement was the strongest part of our game.”

   The Elite League might have been wise to simply plug in the entire Greyhound team for the fall season.

Contention, and Bartolo Colon

   The long Major League baseball season leaves ample room for thrills and disappointment, sometimes in back to back games, and sometimes even in the same game. 
   For the Minnesota Twins, their current symbol of futility is Bartolo Colon, and that’s not entirely fair. 
   The surprising run to early contention was impressive enough that we were all pretty much convinced the Twins could make it last all season. That was pretty optimistic, considering that the starting pitching, then the relief, took turns letting the club down. Still, they battled and narrowly missed clinging to first place at the All-Star break.

   If the Twins battle back and manage to stay in contention all season, so much the better. If they falter, well, it’s been a promising run and portends a more promising future.
   The length of the season, however, comes into play here. Our hopes stay high for the Twins to stay in contention, and once the Cleveland Indians passed them, they stayed close. But coming from behind were the Kansas City Royals, and behind them, even the Detroit Tigers -- who would lead the league if they could play the Twins every week. The Royals stormed past the Twins this week, after the Twins hit the road for Los Angeles, where they faced the Dodgers, who might be the best team in baseball.

   Having dropped to third, the Twins’ next drop is out of pennant contention, after which our next objective as followers is for the Twins to stay above .500. Oops! Losing the first game at L.A. dropped the Twins to an even .500 mark at 48-48. If they drop below .500, well, there’s not a lot of incentive left, except what the players can generate by themselves.

   Signing Bartolo Colon was an act of heading off futility. The Twins were hurting for a starting pitcher who could last six innings, in hopes of taking some of the workload off the bullpen. Everybody got a good laugh when Colon showed up -- 44 years old, a quite enormous girth, and no doubt that his once high-90s fastball had slowed down about 10 mph.

    His first start was against the New York Yankees, and Colon worked three scoreless innings, gave up a run in the fourth, then got in trouble in the fifth, where two or three balls were hit solidly. A 2-run home run off a reliever made it look worse than it was, but the Twins lost 6-3.
   Fast-forward to Monday night, in Los Angeles, and Colon got his second start. He again went through the lineup once without any trouble, and it was scoreless until the Twins went up 2-0 in the top of the fourth. Colon blanked the Dodgers in the fourth, and it was still 2-0 in the last of the fifth.

   Jack Morris was doing the color commentary on Fox Sports North, and he accurately captured what happened. Dodger catcher Yasmani Grandal socked a home run on the first pitch he saw, cutting the Twins lead to 2-1. “The pitch,” said Morris, “was 2 inches outside, off the plate. It was a good pitch, bt Grandal reached out and got it.”

   Next up was Joc Pederson, and he took a ball, then also reached outside and socked a home run to make it 2-2. Right-fielder Yasiel Puig was up next, and he drilled an opposite-field triple. The sixth, seventh and eighth hitters in the Los Angeles batting order hammered home run, home run, triple. As Morris surmised, Colon’s fastest pitch was at 90 or 91 mph, where it had been 97 or 98 in his younger years. So the Dodgers hitters were jumping on first-pitch (or second) fast balls, even if they had to lunge at them a couple inches off the plate.

   It didn’t seem fair. The cynics came out of the woodwork, insisting Colon doesn’t have it any more. But he threw good pitches, pitches that shouldn’t have been swung at, and they resulted in three major shots. Chris Taylor, LA’s leadoff hitter, singled Puig home, and after getting through four near-perfect innings, the Dodgers guessed right and the 5-run fifth carried them to a 6-4 victory.

   My take is that the Twins have struggled trying to find pitchers who can through four scoreless innings, could put Colon to good use. Either have him start and go four, or put him in the bullpen and let him come in and throw three innings of relief every three or four days.