NHL playoffs 2013: Why you should root for the Minnesota Wild

By Andrew Ferraro, Hockey Wilderness

So your team just got eliminated, eh? No? Oh, YOUR team was eliminated while you were on Spring Break a month ago. That’s cool, you’re welcome here, too. We are the Minnesota Wild, and we’re 147th in the NHL in online jersey sales.

There’s a Junior team in Korea that gets more hits than wild.com, and if you were to ask 450 adults from various NHL cities to name the team that is in St. Paul, they’d say “Where’s that?” before they’d say “The Wild.”

But we don’t care about that stuff. You’ll be hard pressed to find more passionate fans. We stalk potential free agents on flightaware.com, and we celebrate the highs and lows of every season by verbally assaulting each other in the comments at Hockey Wilderness. We are the State of Hockey after all, and right now, the capital is the Xcel Energy Center where the Wild will host Games 3 and 4 (and hopefully 6) of our first round series with the Chicago Blackhawks.

If the thought of joining a crazed fan base does not strike your fancy, consider the obvious reason why you should cheer for the Wild this Spring. You better hope someone knocks off the Blackhawks early, because if we don’t they are going to run through the playoffs like ... well, like they did during the regular season.

We also have some kid named Jonas Brodin. This guy is the the real deal, and No. 25 is going to impress on the blueline for years to come right along with another super talented rookie named Charlie Coyle. Still not ready to jump on the Wild train? Well, let’s get serious. You’re not going to cheer for the Red Wings, because you already hate them, and the people that are cheering for them don’t read well enough to get to this site.

And the Ducks, Kings, Sharks and Canucks? Like you are going to stay up late enough to be put asleep by that collective pile of garbage. Look, you can’t help who you love (right?), but if you have not decided on a team yet, don’t go West Coast. You’ll have to stay up until midnight just to get potentially heartbroken two hours later than you would have had you picked the Wild.

So that only leaves the Wild, Blackhawks and Blues. Look the ‘Hawks might be the overwhelming favorites, but they just won in 2010, and they have a goal song that will make you want to stab your eyes out with the broken end of that fat pencil you used in first grade. The Blues are eliminated next because it’s baseball season and that is the ONLY sport in St. Louis that people care about right now. Seriously, someone just sent me an email asking me if Halak could play catcher.

The Wild is the easy choice; Our fan base will welcome you with open arms. All five of us are still looking for someone else to start “Yo Momma” jokes with down in the comments section below. Won’t you join us?

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