Stanzel’s Sports Takeout — BREAKING NEWS: 3.21.25

Mar 21

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Sixteen basketball games yesterday, 14 dances for my teen in less than 24 hours this weekend.

Women’s Frozen Four is tonight and Sunday at Ridder Arena. The Gophers take on undisputed No. 1 Wisconsin at 7:30 tonight; the Badgers have beaten them five times already this season. Defending champion Ohio State and the lone non WCHA team, Cornell, play at 4.

It’s the Last Call in Saint Paul at the last non on-campus NCHC Tournament comes to The X. Lot of bar owners will be mad at missing the UND crowd for a long weekend moving forward. If you’re going, keep an eye on DU’s Zeev Buium, the future Wild stud who, as a sophomore, just won his second straight Offensive Defenseman of the Year award. Buium could play for the Wild still this season if he turns pro.

Twins open up in St. Louis next Thursday. Royce Lewis out for the opener; Brooks Lee scratched yesterday with back spasms.

Gopher women’s hoops went on road as a two seed in the WBIT (boys basketball tourney at Williams Arena) and disposed of Toledo 65-53 last night. They’re at Missouri State on Sunday at 2 p.m.

Wild Scores Early, Often in 4-0 Win Over Seattle

The Wild was due for a laugher, especially a winning one.

In a game that started at an unreasonable 8:52 p.m. local time, the Wild scored three times in the opening 4:29 minutes en route to a 4-0 win over the Kraken at The X. I’d hate to see TNT’s third-period ratings of this route.

Ryan Hartman, Matt Boldy and Liam Ohgren scored in a span of 102 seconds, and Boldy later added his second of the game. Ohgren had been recalled Wednesday in case Marcus Johansson (sick) couldn’t play, and he couldn’t.

So the Wild was without Kaprizov, Eriksson Ek, Brodin, Foligno and Johansson. Brodin is having some full practices and should be getting close. There’s zero timeline on Kaprizov, and neither he nor Eriksson Ek have seen the ice in a blue moon.

Filip Gustavsson made 34 saves - a little easier pitching that shutout when you’re spotted a three-goal lead.

Minnesota is 3-2-1 with the final game of this seven-game homestand Saturday at 1 p.m. against Buffalo. The Wild has won back-to-back home games for the first time since before the 4 Nations break.

The Wild has 13 games left and is eight clear of the final wild card - right now that’s Calgary. Again, it wouldn’t be the worst thing for Minnesota to fall into the final Wild Card spot and play in the Pacific for the playoffs instead of facing Winnipeg or Dallas.

Wolves Suddenly Slumping

A few short days ago, the Wolves were just a half game behind Golden State to move out of the play-in round. After Wednesday’s BAD loss to a New Orleans team that had won six times on the road all season, Minnesota sits in eighth - meaning they’d travel to the Clippers instead of hosting the first play-in game.

And while the Wolves can make amends tonight when they host the Pelicans again, I’ve seen enough to realize this team is not remotely sound enough defensively to make any kind of run. They’ve let two inferior teams run roughshod over them - they’ve allowed 30 3-pointers in the last two games.

Jaden McDaniels fell back to Earth big time against New Orleans (five points in 24 minutes), Naz Reid wasn’t very good and NAW went 1-for-7 from the field.

Eleven games left for the Wolves, who have fallen 1.5 games behind the Warriors for sixth. After tonight against the Pels, Minnesota plays four straight games against teams in the top six of their respective conference.

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