Scheduling mix-up sends prep, college teams to Target Center this week

Somebody walking into the Target Center this week will wonder, what's up?

After the Portland @ Wolves game on Saturday, a crew starting tearing apart the basketball court. Hockey boards were scheduled to arrive on Sunday and, by Monday, the Target Center floor will be covered with ice.

Four high school boys' hockey teams have practices scheduled for TC on Tuesday.

The Gophers men's hockey team will practice at TC on Wednesday afternoon.

And, Wednesday evening, those four prep teams will be back playing section finals at TC instead of Mariucci Arena where those games are usually held. The Maroosh is unavailable most of this week because the U.S. Synchronized Skating Championships have the building from Wednesday to Saturday.

Wednesday's two games are:

* Minnetonka vs. Eden Prairie, 6 p.m. for the Section 6AA championship

On Thursday, both the Gophers and the Wisconsin Badgers will practice at TC. The next day, the Gophers will have their Friday morning skate at TC and the Badgers will skate there, too, sometime.

All this, of course, is being done to help both college teams prepare for their 7 p.m. game on Friday at TC where they used to play in the past so more people could watch their games in person.

This year, that's not the reason the game is at TC. It's a scheduling snafu. The second game of their series will be at 1 p.m. Sunday, back at Mariucci. Saturday at the Maroosh was unavailable.

Craig Flor, the arena manager of Mariucci, is taking much of the blame on himself.

As the story goes, this regular-season ending series at one time was scheduled at one time for the Kohl Center in Madison, Wis.

So now the synchronized skating people are taking Mariucci over this week. The plexi-glass on top of the hockey boards will be removed, the circles, lines and all other signs of hockey on the ice will be covered up. A simple method will be used. Put paper over them and then flood over them.

All will be restored late Saturday or early Sunday. Remember it's a 1 p.m. start for the Gophers-Badgers game on Sunday.