Earlier today, we here at Hockey Wilderness expressed a desire for you to like our team, please. We gave several bullet-proof reasons for you to like our team, and we are happy that, upon reading them, you have decided to like our team.

Though we are insistent that everyone should like the Minnesota Wild, we're also not tyrants. We understand that there are people who do not like the Minnesota Wild, and as responsible journalists, we would be remiss to not present both sides of this story.

So, with that in mind, we've decided to bring in Wild Hater Laureate Anthrax Jones to make a case as to why you should all #PleaseHateMyTeam, the Minnesota Wild.

Oh, you don't gotta say please. It's my pleasure to hate the Minnesota Wild. While it's my pleasure (I've been hating the Wild before it was cool, I'm a hipster that way), it's your duty, Dear Hockey Fan, to hate the Minnesota Wild.



First off, let's get this out of the way: the Minnesota Wild shouldn't even exist. The Minnesota North Stars, the bright green and gold North Stars, the sick "N star" logo, that should still exist. It doesn't, because the fans of Minnesota (THE STATE OF HOCKEY is what they'd tell you if they weren't so busy stuffing their gullets with fish products of questionable origin) refused to support the North Stars the way they deserved to be supported. The season the North Stars made a miracle run to the Stanley Cup Finals, 1991, was witnessed by a skitch under 7,900 fans per game at the Met. SICK ATTENDANCE, LAKEBILLIES. Norm Green, the owner of the North Stars at the time, decided to get the righteous fuck outta dodge and took the Stars to Dallas, where the team proceeded to win a Stanley Cup within the decade. I needn't tell you, Dear Hockey Fan, that the fans in Minnesota have yet to see a Stanley Cup raised by their home team. As the dear Norm Green left town, he was catcalled with chants of "Norm Sucks" and subjected to other abuses by the jilted tens of hundreds loyal North Stars fans. Norm Green, of course, got the last laugh: he didn't have to spend any more time in Minnesota.



Wild fans will tell you Norm Green was the worst owner in NHL history. This is what we call "cognitive dissonance", because the worst owner in the NHL today owns... the Minnesota Wild! Did you like the lockout in 2012? You didnt? Did you write a nice thank you note to Craig Leipold, the aforementioned owner of the Minnesota Wild, for helping spearhead that lockout? Well you oughta! Craig Leipold, who dumped the city of Nashville and the Predators like a father running out on his wife and children for a pack of lutefisk and promising to BE RIGHT BACK, spent the summer of 2012 talking out of both sides of his mouth like Harvey Dent. In July, Leipold signed US Olympic failures Zach Parise and Ryan Suter to twin contracts of 13 years and $98 million dollars. As it turns out, these are contracts Leipold never intended honoring anyway, just months later crying poverty and demanding that ALL player contracts be slashed of their original value to something more palatable to himself and his billionaire friends. Those contracts may as well have been written on toilet paper.

Step one: sign super-overrated players to super-overvalued contracts

Step two: smile and shake hands and present your ugly-ass jersey to your new players at your stupid press conference

Step three: wait

Step four: Cry to the media about overpaid players and demand contracts be invalidated

All within the span of three months! Here, read this shitstain's excuse for dumping the Preds , only to scoop up another franchise within a year. Doesn't your heart bleed for him?

If none of this moves your meter when you're considering who NOT to root for in the NHL playoffs (spoiler: it's still Minnesota, pay attention here), then consider this: Minnesota came into the league and decided the best way to compete was to hire former Devils' coach Jacques Lemaire, who coached a style of hockey known as "Old Man Snoring On The Couch" Minnesota built the foundation of their bastard, ill-gotten, shambling, zombie-North Star franchise on awful, boring hockey and simply never broke out of it. To this day, the Wild have had exactly ONE player who could be deemed exciting: 2014 Stanley Cup champion Marian Gaborik. The rest of their history has been dotted with awful checking-line type players who the fans revered as stars, like Wes Walz (right?), and Mikko Koivu (right?????), and current fan favorite Matt Cooke, who if you cut off his head and emptied the contents into the flux capacitor of a Delorean, could power time travel between now, the birth of Christ, back to now, and into the year 10,566 AD.



All this worship of these mediocre, meandering players from the suddenly passionate (wink wink) Wild fans is cloaked in a self-righteousness matched only by fans of franchises like Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Montreal. You know, franchises who have actually won something in their history. The Wild have nothing in the rafters of the X-enema Center other than 30 NHL team logo banners and a banner with the retired number "1", a tribute to the number of fans outside of Minnesota who would care if Craig Leipold moved the Wild to Houston or San Antonio or Galveston or fucking Timbuktu. We don't want to give this fan base any actual ammunition to match their attitude.



And if you need one more reason to #PleaseHateMyTeam, here's the best one: almost everyone wants to see ST LOUIS beat Minnesota. That's the SAINT LOUIS BLUES of Barret Jackman, of David Backes, of Steve Ott, that everyone is rooting for over the next two weeks. Wrap your mind around that.

Don't be on the wrong side of history. Fuck these guys.