Vegas Wins, Making Minnesota Historic Losers
The Golden Knights 3-2 victory over Minnesota last night in St. Paul marked a couple things of note in this first round playoff series.
It capped a comeback for the Golden Knights in the series who at one point trailed 2-1 after dropping game 2 in Vegas and losing in Game 3 by a combined 10-4 score.
It snapped a streak of two straight overtime games (both Vegas wins courtesy of Ivan Barbashev and Brett Howden) by finally finishing in regulation.
The Game 6 winning effort marked the first goal of the series for VGK star, Jack Eichel, who put the Golden Knights on top 2-1 In the 2nd period, a lead they would never relent.
Vegas goaltender, Adin Hill, now sports a playoff record of 16-9, allowing 2 or fewer goals in half of his postseason starts.
It ensured that Vegas will now do battle with the Edmonton Oilers in the 2nd round for the 2nd time in as few as three seasons, a team they went 2-2-0 against in the regular season this year.
The 2023 meeting between the two was one of the multiple series victories Vegas captured on their way to the Stanley Cup as they dispatched Edmonton in 6 games, winning the last two of the series with 9 combined goals scored.
Vegas advancing also signals the 5th time in 8 seasons as a franchise that they have appeared in the 2nd round.
For all the fun and good stuff in regards to the Golden Knights, there’s the not so fun stuff that the loser gets to deal with.
They get to face the fallout, the pushback, the consequences and new trends that come with a first round exit.
In the case of the Minnesota Wild, they get a set of circumstances that no team has ever before experienced.
After dropping three consecutive games, 2 of which were on their home ice at Xcel Energy Center, the Wild have now become the first team in the history of the NFL/NBA/MLB or NHL to make the playoffs 8 or more times in a ten year time frame and never advance past the first round.
Truly the worst of the best.
Good enough to be there every year, bad enough to never capitalize.
Imagine, your favorite team making the playoffs on a yearly basis and never having a single thing to show for it, not even a 2nd round appearance.
That is the ultimate form of hornswoggling.
Imagine, they making you think this year could be different just to do it again and again.
Some fans may call it purgatory, being trapped in an endless cycle of some type of pseudo competitiveness.
But the Wild pulling the old rope-a-dope on their fans isn’t new to Minnesota sports as a whole.
The Vikings of the NFL, Twins of the MLB, and Timberwolves of the NBA are all guilty of wounding the hearts of fans who cheer for any team In the land of 10,000 lakes.
Not to say Minnesota hasn’t had their successes, the Twins won two world series (1987 and 1991) and the Minnesota Lynx of the WNBA were yearly contenders in the 2010’s winning chips in 2011, 2013, 2015 and 2017.
So while not all doom and gloom, including the Timberwolves just coming off a first round series win over the Los Angeles Lakers, and being still very much in the NBA playoff hunt, you can tell that Minnesota fans more often than not are just not having a good time.
In fact, the Wolves might be their only reason to smile as of late.
Typically, when the lights shine the brightest, the stage is the largest and all eyes are on them, one can often expect the team with “Minnesota” on their apparel to falter first.