sports
Michael Rand started RandBall with hopes that he could keep lies from conquering the minds of the weak. So far, he's only succeeded in using the word "redacted" a lot. He welcomes suggestions, news tips, links of pure genius, and pictures of pets in Halloween costumes here, though he already knows he will regret that last part.
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Posts about Wild coaching
Mid-day talker: #PariseWatch stakeout at the MSP Airport
Posted by: Michael Rand Updated: July 3, 2012 - 1:35 PM
Fortunately, it was not a wasted trip; about 25 minutes after we got there, Parise and fiance Alisha Woods came very casually down the escalator toward baggage claim. Unfortunately for Wild fans and the rest of the NHL folks hold their breath, Parise said he has not yet made a decision on where he will play.
You can watch the video we shot with Parise, who said he was heading back to Orono, where he has a home. Please also enjoy the sight of our thumb in that video as well. And please consider us for all your future stalking/stakeout needs.
The RandBall vault: 10 years ago, we wrote a long feature on 17-year-old Zach Parise
Posted by: Michael Rand Updated: July 2, 2012 - 2:59 PM
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Zach Parise thought it was a prank.
Sports Illustrated does not call 17-year-old hockey players. The magazine's glossy finish has long been reserved for Michael Jordan, Brett Favre and Wayne Gretzky, for crying out loud.
"The lady called and said she was from Sports Illustrated," Parise said. "I asked her if she was joking."
She was serious. Parise, a senior at Shattuck-St. Mary's, a private school in Faribault, Minn., was to be featured in the
"Faces in the Crowd" section after dominating a prestigious tournament in Calgary.
It gets better.
A different SI feature simultaneously coveted Parise. A week after being a Face in the Crowd, he had a full page as the Old Spice Athlete of the Month. (This one was in the swimsuit issue, in case you missed it.)
Teammates and friends endlessly tease him about being SI's new golden boy. Parise is more likely to blush than puff out his chest. He is remarkably humble despite these gaudy statistics: 69 goals and 93 assists in 58 games this season, heading into the Midget AAA national tournament, which begins today in Colorado Springs.
Long before the national acclaim, Minnesotan youth hockey followers were talking about him in simple, declarative sentences. He skates hard. He has tremendous hands. He has an unmatched inner drive. Give him some space to breathe - both on and off the ice - and he could be the best player the state has produced.
The only knock on him is that at 5-11, 170 pounds, he does not have prototypical NHL size. But remember, he is only 17 and growing.
"Without getting too goo-goo about it, he's a coach's dream," Shattuck head coach Tom Ward said. "From my era, the only guy I can really compare him to is Neal Broten."
Utopia
Zach Parise has a life most people only experience when their eyes are closed.
Jean-Paul (J.P.) Parise, his dad, moved the family from Bloomington to Faribault when Zach entered Shattuck in sixth grade. J.P., a former North Stars captain and coach, became the school's hockey director and oversees the school's eight hockey teams - six for the boys, two for the girls. The academic and hockey standards are equally high.
The Midget AAA team, equivalent to a Junior "A" team, plays a national schedule and has yearly trips overseas. The team has won two of the past three national titles and goes into this year's tournament with a record of 49-4-6. About three-quarters of the players on this year's Midget AAA squad eventually will play Division I college hockey. Parise signed with North Dakota and will play there in the fall. Linemate Brady Murray - son of ex-Shattuck and current Los Angeles Kings coach Andy Murray - will join him in 2003. Tyler Hirsch, his other linemate, will play for the Gophers
this fall.
On a recent sunny afternoon, J.P. and Zach Parise led a tour of the Shattuck campus. The school, with an enrollment of about 300 students in grades 6-12, has its own ice arena. Each of the eight teams practices every day.
The drama class is learning how to execute a fight scene. "Hey Zach, check this out," a classmate shouts. Soon after, there is a smacking sound and the classmate's victim falls onto a mat. Parise already has taken that class, as well as "Dance for Athletes." Of course, there also are typical college prep classes - with an atypical average class size of about 14 students.
A combination of academic and hockey paradise is found at the bottom of deep pockets. Tuition for boarding students at Shattuck is about $25,000 a year. The hockey fee is an additional $3,000.
Superstar sons of the hockey director get a discount.
"Free," J.P. Parise said.
It can't possibly get much better, and Zach knows it. "I have everything I want here," he said. "I have a key to the
rink. I can skate whenever I want."
The frozen tundra
Zach Parise is expected to save North Dakota hockey.
It sounds funny to say a program one year removed from the NCAA title game needs a rebirth, but so it goes at the hockey-crazed school. UND opened its $100 million arena with a .500 team this season. Parise is expected to lead a young group that quickly will bring the program back to the top.
"I get e-mails from UND fans all the time," Ward said. "They think he's going to save the program. I've talked to coach [Dean] Blais about it. They need to find a way to get some of the pressure off of him, to let him be himself."
Parise does not seem fazed by much, but he also acknowledges things will be different. Shattuck, with old stone buildings and heavy wooden doors, looks like a castle. There literally is not a moat to keep out intruders, just a figurative one.
"It's going to be hard to adjust," said Parise, who took his official visit to UND when the school opened its new ice palace in October. "There were 12,000 people there for warmups. It was an unforgettable experience."
Donna Parise, Zach's mom, works for Shattuck's board of directors. She does not talk about the Hall of Fame bust some think already should be carved for her son.
"My baby," Donna said.
Yes, but . . .
Zach Parise cannot top this:
Legend has it that Marlon Brando, while attending Shattuck more than 60 years ago, became so annoyed with the clock tower ringing every morning at 5 that he scaled the tower, removed the bell's clapper, lugged it down and buried it in an adjacent field.
"I've never done that," Parise said.
But he can bury the puck.
His extended hockey family does not want to jinx him. When pressed, however, they refuse to put a ceiling on his projected career. The potential for college hockey excellence, NHL stardom and a place among the hockey greats is there.
The tournament that sparked Sports Illustrated's interest in him was Mac's Major Midget AAA. Parise had 29 points in seven games and was named MVP for the second consecutive year. Almost 200 eventual NHL players have played in the tournament in its 24-year history. Scott Gomez. Petr Nedved. Mike Modano. Dany Heatley.
"I'd say he's definitely the best to ever play here, yes," tournament organizer Carl Archibald told the Calgary Sun.
Can Zach Parise equal the pro careers of those players? Perhaps part of the answer lies with his father, who already had his time in the NHL spotlight.
J.P. was raised in Smooth Rock Falls, Ont., a small hockey town that had an indoor arena with natural ice six months of the year. He talked about the values he was raised with, the ones that took him to the NHL: work ethic, preparation and winning little battles.
His favorite catchphrase, though, was this: Maximizing your skill. He said it so many times that the words seemed to
materialize in mid-air.
And who in the room has the most skill to maximize?
The elder Parise looked down, chuckled, then looked back up. Amidst a backdrop of well-worn NHL jerseys from 976 games played, J.P. jerked his thumb in the direction of the 17-year-old kid sitting next to him.
"He's way past me," J.P. said.
And still going.
Thursday (Top-5 picks, playoffs and end times) edition: Wha' Happened?
Posted by: Michael Rand Updated: March 8, 2012 - 8:36 AM
Twins: No. 2 overall; Vikings: No. 3 overall; Wild: The local NHL squad has the sixth-fewest points in the NHL right now, and it's not hard to imagine that worsening (especially considering two teams have just one fewer point).
And the Timberwolves, who play the lottery frequently enough to have the Powerball named after them, would be in the playoffs if the season ended right this minute.
End times, indeed. The only thing hotter than the Wolves right now is the Grand Forks Olive Garden. After last night's 106-94 victory over Portland, the Wolves are now 9-2 this season against Portland, Houston, Dallas and San Antonio. Per the Wolves PR folks, their record against those four teams combined in the previous four seasons? 2-57. That is not a misprint.
Are you fully prepared to accept this crazy new world order, whereby every pro team except the Timberwolves is hoping for some draft magic? Are you ready to pin your playoff hopes and dreams to a team that went 32-132 in the past two seasons combined?
The splash of water could be coming in a few days when the Wolves embark on a seven-game road trip. But if they make it through that in decent shape, look out. Unlimited breadsticks for all.
Rocket's Red Glare: The Wild, with this nosedive, is officially 'One of Us'
Posted by: Michael Rand Updated: March 7, 2012 - 3:17 PM
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Is the Wild finally ONE OF US?
Of course, like any great philosophical question, one has to answer a number of smaller questions before you can get to the biggie. For instance, before we can decide that the Wild is ONE OF US, we have to decide what it means to be ONE OF US.
I have three complementary hypotheses that have converged to create the big question. The first hypothesis, which is built purely upon personal experience and anecdotal evidence and is without any empirical research whatsoever, is that your sports allegiances are more or less cemented at the age of 12, give or take a year or two. When I was in the proper age range the Twins won the World Series for the first time and the Vikings made an improbable run through the NFC playoffs that finally died in the empty hands of Darrin Nelson. In retrospect, I now realize that my love for those two teams became a life long affair during that fall and winter. The Timberwolves, who began play a couple of years later – and subsequently just outside of the age window – will always be a team that I follow, and for whom I root, but not with quite the same, unabashed, irrefutable, unexplainable passion.
My second hypothesis builds upon the first: it takes about a generation, coupled with at least some small measure of success, before a team becomes ingratiated into a community. Any new team is likely to be embraced by the community for a while. For instance, the second coming of the Winnipeg Jets is the hottest ticket in Canada right now. But that initial shine can wear off relatively quickly and the casual fan will find it harder and harder to take an interest in a team once the novelty is gone. Thus, what any new team needs once the first wave of good will is gone is patience. It needs to wait about a generation, while the 12-year-olds who fell in love with the team when it was brand new grows up and starts taking their children to games. The new team also needs to have some sort of success – a division championship, a nice playoff run, or even an unexpected playoff appearance or two at the very least – in order to give all of those 12-year-olds a taste of how good victory can be, otherwise they might not stick around and then all truly will be lost. Nonetheless, after about a generation, a “new” team will finally start to feel familiar and part of the community because they will have had a fan base that will have always had the team as a part of their lives.
My third hypothesis is that there are generally ascribable traits to the typical Minnesota sports fan, or ONE OF US. We perhaps celebrate relatively minor accomplishments with greater verve than we should because we know that disappointment is not far behind. In fact, we know that it will end badly. This is without question. And we know this because we have become conditioned by our sports teams to know this. We are occasionally given tantalizing glimpses of what might be, but then Brett Favre throws across his body, or the Twins draw the Yankees in the playoffs or the Timberwolves miss out on the draft lottery again or Michigan comes back against the Gophers in the fourth quarter by running the same play over and over and so on and so forth all the way back to four early Super Bowls and the ’65 Series. We have been beaten into submission by just enough success to make that gut punch really, really hurt.
So, I ask again, is the Wild finally ONE OF US?
Is it time to lump our St. Paul franchise with all of the rest of them on the west side of the river? Is it just as disappointing for all of the same reasons? For a long time, the Wild seemed to stand alone. The franchise was new, had a great facility and even belonged to the other twin city. And perhaps the seemingly natural inclination of the Minnesota fan to already feel put upon for living in “flyover country” was only exacerbated by the fact that most of the country still thinks of hockey as a “flyover sport.” Perhaps that bought the Wild an additional season or two of good will.
Yet, we now seem to be standing at a crossroads with this franchise, and it has made me start to believe that they are truly ONE OF US. If it takes a generation or so, and some success, to become part of the fabric of the community then the Wild is at least very close, if not already there. The Wild has been around long enough for some of their youngest fans on day one to have grown up and possibly have had children of their own. Additionally, the Wild has made one magical playoff run, been to the playoffs a couple of other times and even captured the division once. And now it seems to be disappointing in the same manner as the other Minnesota teams.
This season has been the most ONE OF US of all. Before the season started, I believe that most Wild fans knew that this was going to be another tough year for the team and that a playoff appearance was perhaps a 50-50 proposition at best. Thus, if you showed a Wild fan today’s standings at the beginning of the year not too many would have been surprised. But it is the way the team has gone about getting to this point in the standings that has been so ONE OF US. The Wild was sitting on top of the entire NHL at one point. And not just after one or two games, but two-and-a-half months into the season. Things looked bright, Mike Yeo looked like a genius, the team was scoring improbable goals late in games to win or push it to overtime. It was just plain fun to watch. And it wasn’t going to last.
It’s not so bad that the Wild is currently scuffling and the hope of making the playoffs dies a little more each day. That was somewhat expected, or at least was not unexpected. However, what was unexpected, and what makes it so ONE OF US, is how the Wild has gone about dragging the fans into the quicksand. If the squad had just been kind of bad all year long it would have been sad but not soul wrenching. But this steep and painful descent – all the way from top of the hill to almost no realistic shot of the playoffs – feels almost purposely hurtful and is just so characteristic of Minnesota sports teams and what they do to the fan base.
The Wild has lost whatever specialness it had and is now just like the other Minnesota teams. The Wild will disappoint and hurt you in ways that you never even imagined, because that’s what Minnesota teams do. Congratulations, Minnesota Wild. For my money, you are now ONE OF US.
Sunday appears to be the first time since Nov. 17, 2010 that Wild + Wolves won on same day
Posted by: Michael Rand Updated: February 20, 2012 - 1:11 PM
In the interim, there were 31 different dates on which both teams played.
Ouch.
We will accept theories and blame assignment in the comments.
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