The Wild are “a franchise that is truly remarkable in its ability to be inconsequential.”
So goes YAHOO! Sports’ eulogy for the State of Hockey’s NHL squad: “Remembering the 2013-14 Minnesota Wild.”
The piece is part of a eulogy series, where a rival team blogger scribbles a brutal, roast of a post when a squad is eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs. The Wild’s is written by a Colorado Avalanche blogger named Jibblescribbits. And he does not hold back.
“All it took for this moderately successful season (by most other teams standards) was having a very good Blues team collapse down the stretch, allowing them to match up against the Avs, one of the worst possession teams in the league (not to mention a team playing without Matt Duchene and their best offensive defenseman due to a skate-by Cooke-ing).”
Some other choice bits: Nobody outside Minnesota will care about the Wild’s third-ever series win; fans of other teams who have season tickets give the Wild game tickets away to young relatives who wouldn’t get to go otherwise, or give it “to a local charity as a tax write-off”; the term “State of Hockey” is a way to boost importance for a franchise that’s otherwise irrelevant.
Here’s a portion of the editor’s note at the top of the post, warning you about the scathing words about to be launched at your favorite, loser team like the downpour of arrows in “300”:
“We’ve asked for these losers, gone but not forgotten, to be eulogized by the people who knew the teams best: The bloggers who hated them the most. … Again, this was not written by us … This is a roast and you will be offended by it, so don’t take it so seriously.”
So at the part where Mr. Jibblescribbits says, “If the franchise got up in the middle of the night and moved to Texas, no one outside the franchises’ home state would notice,” remember, it’s a roast. YAHOO! does this for every team that loses in the playoffs. It’s not a random attack against the Wild.
Still … Ow.
