An advice column for people who live with people who live for sports
What happened on Friday, April 17, 2015?
Wild pun and win: You can write your own pun — it was a “wild start” or whatever. The fact is that the Minnesota Wild jumped on the St. Louis Blues early last night and never let up. They led from the three minute mark on and never gave up the lead. The final score was 4-2 but three of those goals, two by Minnesota and one by St. Louis were scored in the last two minutes of the game. Line: As a neutral observer, I feel for St. Louis, who always seems to just not quite have the answer in the playoffs, but I want Minnesota to win. Minnesota is such hockey country, they should have some NHL success.
Glass half full or totally empty?: That’s the question fans of the Pittsburgh Penguins will be asking themselves this morning after their team gave up a goal in the first 30 seconds of their first playoff game of the year last night against the New York Rangers. That early lapse turned out to be fatal. They were never able to catch up to the Rangers once they spotted them that early goal and lost 2-1. The optimists will say that other than that, the Penguins played well against the favored Rangers. The pessimists will point out that there’s no margin for error when you’re an underdog in the playoffs and then probably tell you that the sky is falling. Line: You can’t make mental mistakes and hope to win in the playoffs. The sky is falling!!
Back and forth, back and forth, for 12 innings: It’s virtually impossible to predict which games are going to be great and which are going to be mundane. That’s actually one of the things about sports that drives fans to watch so many games. You never know, but you want to be watching when something extraordinary happens, so you just watch a lot. A great baseball game broke out last night between the Arizona Diamondbacks and the San Francisco Giants. The Giants scored a run in the bottom of the ninth to push the game into overtime (called extra innings in baseball.) Then both teams scored in the tenth. Neither team scored in the eleventh. And finally, both teams scored in the twelfth inning, but the Diamondbacks scored more. Arizona won, 7-6. Line: Making baseball faster is a hot topic but there are no complaints when an extra innings game breaks out. I guess that’s the exception that proves the rule.
