Being an entirely biased and somewhat epic account of things I think are interesting about Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.

Andrew Shaw (aka Shawzer/Shawsy/Sauce/Mutt) is a tiny adorable fighty forward for the Chicago Blackhawks. Getting to the Blackhawks took him a while. It took him three rounds in the draft to get picked; he was passed over completely in his first two years and on his third go, the Blackhawks didn't take him until the fifth round.

Okay. Here's the thing about Minnesota. We are the State of Hockey; everyone here grows up with hockey. It doesn't matter if you don't follow hockey, if your family doesn't follow hockey-- there is hockey everywhere. Flooding your backyard every winter is super normal. Every single sports store here sells ice skates and roller blades. A stupidly high percentage of kids play hockey-- our high school hockey tournaments are televised, and on cable too! (During one Wild game, the Wild were on a POWER PLAY and the announcers got distracted talking about the local HIGH SCHOOL hockey prospects.) When it comes to hockey, Minnesota is similar to Canada--in a way that, to our knowledge, isn't true in the rest of the United States, even other large hockey markets--with the pervasiveness of hockey in the local culture.

what it says on the tin