Stanzel’s Sports Takeout — BREAKING NEWS: 1.24.24
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First-place Minnesota and second-place Montreal in a PWHL tilt at The X tonight.
Mauer Set to Join Hall of Fame
They don’t give you extra points for being nice, but if they did, Joe Mauer would have gotten 100percent of the vote for the Hall of Fame. Mauer hovered around 77 percent-above the threshold of 75-and is officially a first-ballot Hall of Famer, it was announced yesterday. He’ll go into the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown July 21.
Mauer has to be the most accessible athlete ever in the Twin Cities. If you didn’t post a picture of yourself with Joe Mauer yesterday, you weren’t a Minnesotan. I’ll never forget going to Target Field just prior to the Zach Parise/Ryan Suter recruitment, and Mauer wearing a green Parise Wild jersey and doing his best pitch about how fun it was to play in your hometown. This was about 2.5 hours before gametime, too.
In nearly 8,000 plate appearances, Mauer popped up in the infield just 31 times. I at first worried his last couple years-mostly injured-had hurt his first-ballot chances. But you just don’t see a catcher do what Mauer did over a decade. May never again.
There have now been 80 first-ballot Hall of Famers. Per Twins Almanac, four are from the great city of Saint Paul-Mauer, Paul Militor, and SPPS grads Dave Winfield and Jack Morris. That’s five percent. Of all first-ballot Hall of Famers.
Wild’s No. 7 Scores Early as Wild Beats Caps 5-3
On a day the Twins’ No. 7 got elected to the Hall of Fame, the Wild’s No. 7 got his team off to a flying start with an early goal of an eventual 5-3 win over the Washington Capitals at The X.
Faber’s play hasn’t been as good as of late. But he’s a kid one year removed from college, where they play 35 games, and he’s a guy who regularly eclipsed 28 minutes a night in the first half of the season. It’s one of the reasons getting another defenseman via trade is so important (to me only, apparently).
Marcus Johansson aka for last night at least "Mo-Joe" scored twice, and just missed an empty net shot as time was expiring when a Caps defender blocked the puck just shy of the goal line.
The Wild hosts Nashville on Thursday before Saturday’s Hockey Day Minnesota tilt with Anaheim. Minnesota has climbed back to the .500 mark for the first time since Jan. 6. After three straight wins they’re just four points back of fourth place Nashville.
Wolves Cough Up 18-Point Lead on KAT’s Historic Night
I joked midway through the second quarter that if Karl-Anthony Towns hit the 50-point mark by halftime, my daughter could stay up to watch the rest of the game. Phew-that would have taken her awhile to recover from.
KAT scored 44 of his career-high 62 points in the first half, but just a putrid effort by the Wolves as a whole especially on the defensive end of a home 128-125 loss to a 10-win Charlotte Hornets team.
The Wolves led by 18 early in the fourth quarter. But they weren’t good defensively all night. They deferred to their hot hand for much of the game-you can respect that-but it became a one-on-one game for KAT late in the second quarter, and the Wolves never got their groove as a team. Anthony Edwards was dishing the ball all over the place, but he only attempted one shot until late in the third.
Chris Finch, who holds nothing back in post-game press conferences, called the Wolves’ game “immature.” At some point, they’ve got to stop saying things as a team like “we’ve just got to learn how to close out games.” They’ve only lost 13 games, and at least half they’ve been in control with six minutes left.
Some will try to blame the officials-and they were brutal (more on that in a second). But you can’t lose this game. Period. The NBA publishes an error report the day after games-there were 10 mistakes in the last two minutes by officials. Only three of them favored the Wolves. One of those that favored the Hornets was a foul that wasn’t called as KAT tried to put Minnesota up with five seconds left.
But they’re still tied with the second best record in the NBA. They’re heading into a reasonably easy stretch, too-their next three games beginning Wednesday at Washington are against teams outside the top 10 in their respective conference.
Gopher Hoops
The good news is the Gopher men’s basketball team has shown they can play with anyone for 40 minutes. But they’re still not closing out those games losing 61-59 to a 10th-ranked Wisconsin team at The Barn last night. The Gophers have lost four straight.
The Gopher women also lost to Wisconsin, 59-56 on the road, dropping to 14-4. Minnesota shotjust 34 percent from the field.
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