Souhan: Which Minnesota pro team has the best chance to end men’s title drought?

The four long-running Minnesota men’s professional sports teams haven’t won a championship since Dan Gladden touched home plate at the Metrodome on Oct. 27, 1991.

The cute, modern slang for such a span is “it’s been a minute.”

As with most cute, modern slang, that’s silly and uninformative.

It hasn’t been a minute. It’s been more than 34 years.

As a new calendar year begins, which of the four long-suffering, occasionally choking teams has the best chance of ending the championship drought?

The Minnesota women’s pro teams are excused from this exercise.

They’re overqualified.

It’s the men who have underachieved.

Will it be the Twins, Wild, Timberwolves or Vikings who win the next title?

Let’s rank them in reverse order of probability.

An optimist could imagine ways that the 2026 Twins could be competitive. Even an optimist would have trouble imagining this franchise winning a World Series in the near future.

Even if the Twins’ next wave of top prospects produces stars, is a team with a low payroll going to be able to fortify the roster to a point where it could beat bigger-market teams in the playoffs?

The Milwaukee Brewers entered the 2025 season with a lower payroll than the Twins, yet won more games than anyone else in the regular season. Then they faced the ultra-rich Los Angeles Dodgers in the playoffs and were swept in four games.

The Twins’ best hope is to become a version of the Brewers, which would be impressive but would not guarantee postseason success.

If J.J. McCarthy develops into a reliable winner, the Vikings could contend for a title, and soon.

I’m more concerned about the sustainability of the roster than the quality of the young quarterback.

This is an older team that has invested heavily in veteran free agents and drafted poorly. The Vikings are not going to be able to afford to keep all of their quality veterans, and they don’t have enough young, affordable players to take the places of those who will depart.

Here’s the more pertinent issue for the Wolves: Can they really beat Oklahoma City in a seven-game series to get to the NBA Finals?

On Oct. 30, the Wild lost their fifth straight time and eighth time in nine games. Would they fire their coach or just be an irredeemably bad team?

Since then, they have played as well as anyone in the NHL. With the rise of Jesper Wallstedt as a quality goalie and Matt Boldy as a prolific scorer, the Wild looked ready to contend, if not win a title.

The trade for defenseman Quinn Hughes makes the Wild the most likely team to end Minnesota’s men’s championship drought.

Now the Wild have a true star forward in Kirill Kaprizov, a rising star forward in Boldy, two quality goaltenders, remarkable defensive depth and a true star defenseman in Hughes who improves the power play as well as the Wild’s 5-on-5 production.