All posts by Daneekas Ghost

NHL

WEEKLY(?) WILD WHANGDOODLE: SEASON OPENER

14 Comments

The Wild kick off their season against Los Angeles tomorrow night, and I thought maybe a look at the upcoming season was in order. Minnesota is coming off their first playoff appearance in a few seasons, albeit an appearance of the “blink and you missed it” variety as the #8 seed. What follows is a quick look at some of the factors that may determine whether they can improve on that result.

ROSTER

The Wild lost Matt Cullen (free agent), Devin Setoguchi (trade), and Cal Clutterbuck (trade) in the offseason, and picked up Matt Cooke and Nino Niederreitter. I liked the guys that are gone, but I don’t know that the loss of any of them is a huge impact. The Wild in the past have always struggled to find centermen, so the loss of Cullen could be a touch more concerning, but Coyle and Granlund (maybe Parise?) should be able to fill that role without too much of a dropoff.

The Wild moved their AHL affiliate to Iowa in the offseason, which, when combined with the fact that they are still a very young team, could have a big impact on the roster makeup. It will be a lot easier to pick up a skater from the minors on short notice, and I expect Mike Yeo to have a pretty fluid roster, especially at the start of the season.

I remember Nino Niederreiter from when he almost singlehandedly pulled off the upset of Russia in the 2010 Under-20 World Championships. It seems he hasn’t really established himself yet in the NHL (2 goals in 64 games), but he certainly seems eager to prove himself (rumor had it that he requested his trade from the Islanders after not getting a chance to make the team after the lockout last season).

Matt Cooke…. *sigh*. I hope he keeps his nose clean. That’s really my only hope for him. I really don’t want the Wild to have to deal with any multi-game suspensions.

Parise, Suter, Koivu, Heatley, Backstrom, Brodin are all back. The Wild are going to rely on young players again this season, but they probably have a solid enough core that, if they can avoid catastrophic injuries, they could be right in the playoff hunt again.

REALINGMENT

The NHL went from 6 divisions to 4 and moved the Red Wings and Blue Jackets to the Eastern Conference, while moving the Jets to the West. I feel like the new divisions really set up the Wild nicely. First of all, Minnesota has gone from 10th to 8th in alphabetical order in the conference, so if playoff spots end up being decided based on that, they’re in!
Perhaps more importantly, the Wild ended up in the division containing the fewest 2012-13 playoff teams.

The Central Division consists of: (* denotes 2012-13 playoff team)

Chicago*
Colorado
Dallas
Minnesota*
Nashville
St. Louis*
Winnipeg

Given that the NHL plays an unbalanced schedule (4 or 5 games against teams in your division, 3 against teams in your conference, 2 against teams not in your conference), that means that the Wild have only 40 of 82 games this season against teams that made the playoffs last year. That’s the lowest number (tied with Chicago and St. Louis) of any team in the NHL.

SCHEDULE

Minnesota opens with four of their first five at home (LA on Thursday, Anaheim on Saturday, then hosting the Jets and the Stars at the end of next week) before an east coast road trip (4 games).
Looking ahead, there are a couple of road trips that look like a bit of a trek (8 of 10 on the road at the end of March, 7 of 8 on the road in December), but they finish the season with 4 of 5 at home, which could be helpful if a playoff push is needed.

With that road trip at the end of March, I’d like to see the Wild in a comfortable playoff position going into the Olympic Break (Feb. 6-Feb. 27) in order to feel good about their chances of making another appearance in the post-season.

THIS WEEK

Los Angeles (7:00, Thursday)
Anaheim (7:00, Saturday)
@Nashville (7:00, Tuesday)

OTHER STUFF

NHL.com Wild Season Preview
Russo on Opening Night Lineups
Parise on the Season

First Monday Book Day

First Monday Book Day – Hugo Awards (and others)

31 Comments

It's that time again, to survey the various science fiction and fantasy awards and see what kinds of interesting short fiction we can find.

2013 Hugo Award Nominees

2012 Nebula Awards

2012 British Science Fiction Association Shortlist

I've read the majority of the short story nominations for those three awards. The three up for the Hugo are all excellent. My favorite is probably "Immersion" by Aliette de Bodard. It's about a society that uses avatars to keep harmony between conqueror and conquered, and the identity confusion that results.

Of all the awards, my favorite story might be "Limited Edition" by Tim Maughan about a group of hoodlums going after a load of precious cargo.

I'll put more extensive links in the comments if people are interested, but that should at least get us started on some book talk.

First Monday Book Day

Monday Book Day: Difficult Reads

87 Comments

I like pretentious things. I like difficult things. The higher the concept is, the more willing I am to try and appreciate what the author/artist/musician was going for. This past month was the most prolific reading month I've had in quite a while, and I read three books in particular that bore out my penchant for difficulty.

The Fifty-Year Sword by Mark Z. Danielewski

Danielewski made this book into an art project. The illustrations are hand-stitched (in the more expensive versions of the book at least) and the effort undertaken to make the experience of this book a visual one as well as a textual one was something that I thought worked very well. The story is short and perhaps not as engaging as it could be; at a party, five orphans are mesmerized by a mysterious storyteller and the box he brings as a prop to tell the story of the titular sword. The book is narrated by the five orphans years later, with different colored quotation marks denoting which of them is recounting the story at that time. The layering of stories and storytellers is something that Danielewski loves to do, but I think he' done it better elsewhere.

Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

I put this book down after 100 pages and I wasn't sure I was going to pick it back up. The violence was unrelenting, unending, and awful. I didn't know that I wanted to suffer through another 250 pages of that. It sat there for two weeks or so before I started up again. When I started back up again, something clicked. It's the story of the kid who joins up with a gang in Mexico/Texas in the 1850s that cuts a bloody path through the West toward the ocean. But it's more about the kid who ends up having to respond to evil, to extermination (of people, of feelings, of knowledge, of everything). McCarthy writes this all in a way that is amazing. I've heard it described as biblical and also as though he's trying way too hard to make it sound like important literature. Both are accurate. Like I said, I like pretention, so I ate it up. I'm really glad I stuck with it, the judge is a great character pitted against the kid.

Satantango by Lazlo Krasznahorkai

Maelstrom is the word that comes to mind. The members of a small, dying, Hungarian village are caught in a rainstorm. Rumor gets around that a savior is coming. Every chapter started with a sense of disorientation, that slowly resolved to something resembling clarity once the point of view was revealed. Every sentence battered and threw me around before finishing half a page later. The rain never lets up in the story and the deluge of the writing matches that well. The structure of the book is really well done (the chapters in the first part are numbered 1,2,3,4,5,6: the second part is numbered 6,5,4,3,2,1 and there is a good reason for it). It's not an uplifting book by any means, but the first half left me in awe, and the second half didn't quite match that, but it was very good. I know there are a couple people here who like Roberto Bolaño, and I think this would fit that same category.

Three books with big aspirations, and I enjoyed all three, although for different reasons. I think that "Satantango" was my favorite that I read this month, it's difficulty ended up being the most rewarding. Share your thoughts on difficult literature or start a discussion of what you read this past month.

2012 Twins Game Recaps

Game 57 Recap: Twins 8 Cubs 7 (10 innings)

3 Comments

Denard Span could feel his brain swimming laps between his ears.

This whole game has been one big blur, people rising up out of the dizzying maelstrom of colors and sounds shouting that we were "coming back!". How many times do we have to come back in this one? It seemed like they had come back 3 or 4 times already, let's see there was the Doumit homer (ed. note - to give the Twins a 6-5 lead), the Plouffe homer (ed. note - to tie the game at 2), the time Babe the Blue Ox ran over the Cubs catcher while Jim Thome dressed as Paul Bunyan applauded from the third base coaches box (ed. note - ????), the time Mastrioanni hit a triple - wait, Mastrioanni hit a triple? this flu is seriously messing with my head (ed. note - Mastrioanni did indeed hit a triple, it scored Dozier and tied the game at 5), and now Morneau had tripled to score Willingham and Gardy is shouting something at me.

Liddle is next to me now. Suddenly I'm on the field. Third base, I think. Yes. I focus all my energy on the bright yellow dragon standing in the batters box (ed. note - Casilla, probably). I hear the crack of the bat and I just start running. It's only after I get back to the dugout that Joe explains to me that I was out by about 20 feet and looked kind of like a fool. Honestly, at this point I'm more focused on not passing out than whether the game is over or not.

Because of that focus it took me a while to realize that I might have to bat. I'm conscious enough to realize this is probably a bad idea as the pitcher's mound currently appears to be occupied by a particularly malevolent shade of purple to my eyes. Josh Willingham looks at me in the on-deck circle and asks if I'm feeling OK. I try to reassure him, but given his look of concern, I'm guessing I ended up speaking in tongues again. I hear him mutter "I had better just take care of this myself." As he walks up to the plate.

2012 Twins Game Recaps

Game 39 Recap: Twins 11 – Brewers 3

1 Comment

MINNESOTA 11 -- MILWAUKEE 3
Twins Record: 13 - 26 (5th in the Central, 30th in MLB)
Highest WPA - Mauer (3 for 5, 2 2B, 3 RBI), Span (4 for 5, 3 R, 3 RBI), Bullpen (3.2 IP, 0 R, 3 H, 1 BB, 2 SO)
Fangraphs - MLB Recap

------------

The only thing more surprising than my little brother giving a speech at his high school graduation last night was seeing that the Twins won their third in a row while we celebrated his being named valedictorian.

2012 Twins Game Recaps

Game 32 Recap: Twins 7 – Blue Jays 6

8 Comments

MINNESOTA 7 -- TORONTO 6
Twins Record: 9 - 23 (5th in the Central, 30th in MLB)
Highest WPA - Doumit (1 for 2, 2 BB, 2 RBI), Mastroianni (2 for 4, 3 RBI), Bullpen (4 IP, 1 R, 5 H, 0 BB, 2 SO)
NOTES - Twins hitters drew 9 walks, 5 of those runners scored.
Fangraphs - MLB Recap
--------------

Rain delay pushed this one into a West-Coast game time-slot, and with Blackburn going against the homer-happy Jays lineup, you could be forgiven for turning in early. If you did, you will not be surprised to learn that the Jays hit 4 home-runs (Bautista with 2) that accounted for 5 of their 6 runs. But the Twins, armed with the ability to watch Kyle Drabek and Carlos Villanueva throw lots and lots of pitches (not many for strikes), would put across a bunch of runs without hitting any balls over the fence.

Ryan Doumit, who has been hitting well (last 3 weeks - .275/.350/.549), started things off with a 2-run single in the first to erase the 1-0 deficit resulting from Bautista's first homer. Then a nice mix of walks (Mauer, Doumit, Parmelee) and doubles (Span, Willingham) in the 5th broke the game open for the Twins as Darin Mastrioanni's first big-league hit came with the bases loaded to drive in two and cap the 4-run inning.

Blackburn did everything he could to give all those runs right back, giving up 3 runs without recording an out in the 6th, but got pulled with the score 6-5. Both teams would add a run in the end to get us to the final score, with Capps pitching a scoreless ninth to earn a save.

The HR that Perkins allowed to Encarnacion was only the second time all season that a Twins reliever has allowed a run in a Friday game (3 runs allowed in 16 innings on Friday this season - 1.69 bullpen ERA). If one were only paying close attention to the games that one had to recap on Friday nights, one might conclude the bullpen has been pretty good.

2012 Twins Game Recaps

Game 25 Recap: Twins 3 – Mariners 2

MINNESOTA 3 -- SEATTLE 2
Twins Record: 7 - 18 (2-9 since my last recap, oh boy)
Highest WPA - Mauer (1 for 3, 2 BB, RBI), Bullpen (3 IP, 0 H, 0 BB, 5 SO)
Fangraphs - MLB Recap

-----------

Twins win!

Mariners bullpen revealed to be vastly inferior to Minnesota equivalent!

Recap posted much later than expected!

Joe Mauer drove in a key run!

We face King Felix tonight! (focus on the positive)

2012 Twins Game Recaps

Game 14 Recap: Twins 5 — Rays 4

6 Comments

MINNESOTA 5 -- TAMPA BAY 4
Twins Record: 5- 9
Lowest WPA - Hendriks (5.2 IP, 4 R, 5 H, 2 BB, SO)
Highest WPA - Willingham (1 for 4, 2B, BB, 3 RBI), Carroll (2 for 3, 2 R, 2 BB, 2B), Bullpen (3.1 IP, O H, 1 BB, 2 SO)
Fangraphs - MLB Recap

--------------------

Denard Span and Jamey Carroll were on base 6 times in this one (1 double, 3 singles, 2 walks in 10 PA) and scored 4 runs. Joe Mauer could have driven in all 5 runs, but left the bases loaded for Willingham in the 7th because Josh is new to the team and wants to feel like he's contributing. AmenableBacon extended his hitting streak to 14 games, and continues to lead the team in quite a few offensive categories (BA/OBP/SLG/HR/RBI/2B/R/TB/HBP).

The bullpen was stellar getting 13 outs in 14 batters, including Matt Capps retiring Longoria, Scott, and Joyce in order in the ninth. Fun fact: Coming into the 9th, those three hitters hit a homerun every 15.9 PA against the Twins, compared to every 22.7 PA against all other teams. That includes the homeruns by Joyce and Longoria earlier in this game.

The Twins April schedule has been pretty tough, but since being steamrolled by the Orioles, the Twins are 5-6 against LA, Tex, NY, and TB.

2012 Twins Game Recaps

Game 7 Recap: Rangers 4 — Twins 1

MINNESOTA 1 -- TEXAS 4
Twins Record: 2-5
Lowest WPA - Swarzak (7 IP, 4 R, 0 BB, 3 SO), Mauer (1 for 4, SO, GIDP)
Highest WPA - Willingham (1 for 2, R, BB, HBP)
Fangraphs - MLB Recap

------------

The Twins made some solid contact in the first few innings, but Texas made some sparkling defensive plays to keep the damage to a Danny Valencia sac fly in the second. 1-0 Twins for the first time all season. But would it be enough?

It would not. Swarzak put up another perfectly reasonable start, the big Texas inning was one where the Twins needed a sparkling defensive play or two. Instead the first 5 Rangers reached (4 singles and an error) resulting in 3 runs. Minnesota would get a few guys on base over the course of the game but never get the big hit to bring the game back within reach.

There are plenty of people who will say Texas is better than the Twins. Tonight the Rangers got a little bit more pitching, a little bit more hitting, and a little bit more defense. That was enough to make this a not terribly exciting end to the Twins longest winning streak of the year.