doodledee

Holy crap, what a weekend in local sports. At least for me, anyway.

• On Friday night KC hooked me up with a ticket to check out the unreasonably good Gopher Hockey squad as they dismantled some joke of a team from Alabama. Something like five of the Gopher's big names were in Europe for the World Junior Tournament, which meant we got to watch a lot of 3rd and 4th liners prove their stuff. If you leave aside the fact that we may have set a WCHA record for fewest checks, it was still a solid performance. Well, except for the parts where Tyler Hirsch kind of shuffled around on the ice with his stick on his hip, spaced out and seemingly disinterested. Let's just say that I was surprised, but not overly so, to read on Saturday that Hirsch had been cut.
• After the game, we went over to Sally's to have a beer and watch the end of the Gopher Football bowl game. It was double plus jumpin' in there, what with the hockey game just getting out and it being a Friday night and the NFL network not being available anywhere else in the 5 state area. But they had it at Sally's. And can I just say it was riveting to watch the meltdown happen live? I couldn't look away. Even to fish the orange slice out of my Blue Moon. (Seriously, an orange. WTF is that about?) As the outcome became clear the atmosphere turned a little, uhh, rowdy. There were several bar-wide FIRE MASON chants. You know the rest.
• On Sunday Hoffmaldo scored me a ticket to the meaningless Vikes/Rams game. It was a good time, even though none of the Vikings appeared to be trying. The most surreal moment was when Tarvaris went down after a hard sack and had to leave the field, so Chilly sent Brad Johnson in to run a single play. The place went nuts. Like 3 weeks ago they booed that guy off the field, now they welcome him home as the prodigal son. Gotta love the NFL. I also waded through like 4 inches of mystery flood water inside the dome. Yuck.
• In Sunday's Strib, Sid suggested that Lou Holtz should be offered the U football coaching job. This on top of his pleading to bring in Bobby Knight to coach the U gopher basketball team. Can you imagine Bobby Knight and Lou Holtz both coaching at the U? I think we should do it, just to see how big of a mess it'll be when Sid's head explodes.
• Was I the only one who noticed late in the 2nd quarter of tonight's Timberwolves game that going into a timeout, the players chose to huddle on the court, away from the coaching staff? Huh? Does this mean the Dwayne Casey deathwatch is officially underway? Some would say yes.