| Minnesota Wild, 2000-2001 Season 1 Highlights |
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| 03/06/01 3-3 tie with St. Louis Blues Game Recap My Dad bought me tickets and a Wild jersey for Christmas 2000. So Dad, his wife Mary, and I went to the Xcel Energy Center to see the Wild play the St. Louis Blues. This was their first trip to the "X" - so we visited the Iron Range Grill for supper, looked at the wall of high school hockey jerseys, and went shopping in the Hockey Lodge. It was my younger brother Mark's 30th birthday - so what better way to celebrate (even though he wasn't along). These were very nice seats in the lower bowl. We had an X-cellent night at the X. We cheered for our favorite Finnish player, Antti Laaksonen. At the time, I was working with the Finnish-American archives at the U of MN. One of my regular researchers from Finland was one of Antti's neighbors when he was growing up. I was also studying Finnish language at the time - so we cheered for Antti in Finnish. |
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| 01/20/01 NHL Super Skills Challenge This was a skills competition amongst the Wild players. The white team against the green team, player against player, testing their skills. There was fastest skater, fastest slapshot, most accurate shot, best goalie, and similar skills. Players also signed autographs prior to the competition. It was a great chance to meet the players and see the new team in action. It was my first time to the "X" as well. |
| Manny Fernandez and Sylvain Blouin signing autographs. |
| Team white lines up for the competition. |
| 02/18/01 3-1 victory over San Jose Sharks Game Recap |
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| 03/20/01 Wild Hockey Unplugged This was one of a series of sessions at local taverns where Wild goalie Jamie "Noodles" McLennan interviewed his fellow players - sort of like an open mic session - at Tom Reed's Sports Bar on 7th Street in St. Paul. Jamie's guests that night were the players from Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Because of my work at the Immigration Archives and my interest in the MN Wild - I just had to go to this special event to meet the players. Part of the evening was a Q & A session with the players. I asked them if they were homesick for news from home and offered to have them come to the IHRC and read some of our Czech and Slovak newspapers. There was a trivia contest and doorprizes. I got a KQ92 bumpersticker - Yahoo! Afterwards the players hung around for photos and autographs. Here are some photos of me with the Gaborik and Kuba. |
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| 04/06/01 3-2 victory over Columbus BlueJackets Recap |
| 03/21/01 0-0 tie with Nashville Predators Recap |
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