It's been a month of farewells for familiar Minnesota faces

This is what happens in sports, right? Players get older. Their value changes. Their skills diminish. They have options.

They leave, and are replaced by new players — and everyone else slides up the pecking order.

It's natural. And yet when it happens all at once, across so many teams — as it has lately in Minnesota — it feels jarring.

Many of the longest-tenured athletes in major Minnesota pro sports who were here when February started are now gone.

The latest? Seimone Augustus, easily the longest-tenured Lynx player (14 seasons) and second-longest-tenured athlete in any major pro sport in the state, agreed last week to a free-agent deal with the rival Los Angeles Sparks.

That same day started with Everson Griffen — the longest-tenured Vikings player — voiding the final three years of his contract, making him a free agent. While he could wind up staying with Minnesota, he certainly could go elsewhere once the new league year starts next month.

Earlier this month, the Wild traded Jason Zucker — the third-longest-tenured member of that organization — to Pittsburgh.

In some ways, even the retirement of Joe Mauer — at the time the longest-tenured athlete in any sport — feels fresh even though it came at the end of the 2018 season.

The longest-tenured mantle now belongs to the Wild's Mikko Koivu, who made his debut on Nov. 5, 2005 — less than a year before Augustus. Koivu has a full no-move clause in his contract, so it would take some doing before Monday's trade deadline for him to join the February exodus. But Koivu is also a free agent after this season.

What we know is this: All those mainstays are bridges to the past, a different era, usually better times. And their departures feel like a significant turning of the page.

Augustus feels like the most jarring departure. She was the last of the "Big Four" Lynx players who were on all four WNBA title teams — along with Maya Moore, Lindsay Whalen and Rebekkah Brunson — who played for the Lynx in 2019.

What we also know is this, though: Gone doesn't mean forgotten.

• • •

The story of 42-year-old Zamboni driver David Ayres coming in and getting the win as the "emergency" goalie against Toronto after both Carolina goalies were injured is the stuff of legend.

It also makes me wish this weird rule were in place in other sports. What if a team getting blown out in baseball could bring in a random designated pitcher from the stands instead of using a position player? I'd watch that.

• • •

The Gophers men's hockey team missed a chance to take control of the Big Ten race when it gave up a two-goal lead at Penn State and lost 3-2 Saturday.

• • •