Monday Musings.....

• The most current PairWise from USCHO.com is out, and the Gopher hockey team is currently tied for 11th. The one-spot jump was thanks to the Alaska Nanooks taking care of Ohio State last night in the first round of the CCHA playoffs. OSU had been tied with the Gophers.
• Thursday's WCHA Final Five game against UMD is still huge. The Strib's Roman Augustoviz thinks the Gophers are in a "win-or-else" situation going into the game - and so are the Bulldogs. I tend to disagree with Roman (I think the Gophers are in for reasons I will articulate in Tuesday's entry), but the game still has huge tournament implications.
• We have a new Mr. Hockey. Plus, he's headed to the University of Minnesota.
• Thursday evening also has the makings of a Gopher fan's clickfest, as the Basketball team will play Texas at 6pm, and the hockey team will play UMD at 7. We'll have a more detailed game preview on Wednesday, but at first glance, it's a tough draw for the Gophers. Although a 10 seed is healthy for a team which struggled down the stretch (and for a team which was likely one of the last four in), having to play Texas in the first round and Duke (in Greensboro, nonetheless) is a tall order.
• Here are Aaron Gleeman's top 40 Twins prospects for 2009. He also has a great analysis of how these prospects were acquired and the youth in reserve position-by-position. It makes one excited for 2009 and for the future.
• Nick Nelson continues his position-by-position analysis of the Twins by examining my dad's favorite player, Nick Punto.
• I'll switch to more Twins-related blogging after the Gophers' seasons conclude - hopefully after two national championships!
• Finally, I attended the Gophers' playoff game Saturday night against St. Cloud State and saw a gentleman wearing a Holy Cross jersey. I guess the joke is on me, since the Gophers lost to Holy Cross in the 2006 Grand Forks Regional, and that he had to pay $100 for an official College of the Holy Cross jersey. If he was a St. Cloud fan, it's simply laughable that he'd choose to do this as an "in-your-face" move, since his squad is yet to win an NCAA Tournament game in seven tries. If he was a North Dakota fan, give it up! We've moved on here in Minny. Besides, UND did not win the title in 2006 either - Wisconsin did. It's not like we Minnesota fans go out and purchase jerseys which celebrate North Dakota's misfortunes - there would certainly be enough of those to go around. However, please come down to the Twin Cities again this weekend, Sioux fans, and spend a lot of money!

Tuesday through Thursday will contain entries with previews for the hockey and basketball tourneys.