Author: Patrick Donnelly

Minnesotans have every reason to be proud of the numerous smoking bans on the way for bars and restaurants in municipalities throughout the state. After all, the clean-air initiatives associate us with such enlightened populations as the city of New York, the state of California, and even the entire country of Ireland, where the average…

To all those people whose mothers told them, “You’ll never amount to anything sitting on your ass all day playing those damn video games!”—this one’s for you. The “Robolounge” is in a dank corner of the Xcel Energy Center. Its denizens, Michael “Buddha” Novak and Tim Dufour, run the robotic cameras used to dramatic effect…

Bobbleheads have recently become all the rage among collectors of sports souvenirs. Those oversized craniums, wobbling on springs as if Parkinson’s disease were desirable in a doll, are a pleasant diversion when perched on your mantel or flanking your computer monitor. They’re funny not just because of their striking ugliness, but because they point beyond…

All those late nights in April and May spent watching the Minnesota Wild’s astonishing West Coast playoff run left many bleary-eyed observers across North America rubbing their eyes and wondering the same thing: What the hell is it? On fleet forward Marian Gaborik, it looks like a cheetah. On plodding veteran Andrew Brunette, maybe more…

The other night, two-dozen hockey fans milled around the Iron Range Grill. They were biding their time. Across the corridor, in a half hour, the puck would drop on the big sheet of ice at the Xcel Energy Center. The Wild, enjoying a hot streak early in the season, would be facing the Vancouver Canucks,…