More Random Sports Nonsense (Now With 100% More Osmo!)

Sorry for the sparse posting this week. I've been kept extra busy by my side job as the assistant news editor over at ArtsJournal.com while the site's managing editor is away in Europe, and on top of that, we're playing a pretty big concert this week, which we'll be taking to New York for a Sunday matinee performance at Lincoln Center this weekend.

But I have to confess, another thing keeping me from the keyboard this week is that I'm a huge hockey fan, and as any red-blooded Minnesotan knows, it's playoff time. I'm one of those obsessive fans who actually buys the NHL Center Ice TV package, knows the names of the play-by-play guys on Hockey Night in Canada, and reads John Buccigross's column every week. There are more than a few of us puckheads in the orchestra, and this time of year, we're all more or less giddy with excitement, stopping each other in the halls to lament Martin Skoula's latest horrific defensive lapse or argue about whether Jacques Lemaire (the Osmo Vänskä of hockey coaches) mixes his lines too much.

Osmo's a big hockey fan, too, which is why I'm bothering to bring this up at all. Way back when he first arrived in town, Osmo was asked to be one of the local celebrities who the Minnesota Wild use to lead the crowd in chanting "Let's play hockey!" just before the puck drops. He already knew a fair amount about the game, and since the Wild have always had at least one Finn on the team, he has a natural rooting interest. (One of the highlights of Osmo's life as a fan was sitting in one of the "on the glass" seats down by the penalty box, and getting noted antagonist Ed Jovanovski, then with the Wild's arch-rival Vancouver Canucks, to shout at him while serving a penalty.) He's been known to hand out free luxury box seats to Wild games to members of the orchestra and their families, and I must admit that I've spent many a night sitting next to him at the Xcel Energy Center, screaming at the referees and needling Osmo to explain one more time how Niklas Backstrom can be Finnish when he clearly has a Swedish name.

He was at the Wild's first playoff game of the year last night as well, and he'll reportedly be there again next Thursday for Game 5. And as you can see from this picture I took backstage at intermission of our concert this morning, he's definitely playoff-ready...

That's right. Our music director has grown a playoff beard. See, to me, that's dedication. He's never had a beard in his life, but his team - our team - is in the playoffs, racked by injuries, and fighting desperately to prove they deserve to at least occasionally get mentioned on SportsCenter, and Osmo is showing solidarity in true old-school fashion!

(Okay, fine. Technically, Osmo claims that the beard has nothing to do with the playoffs, and that he just got lazy about shaving while on a composing retreat in the Lapland a couple of weeks ago. I told him that my version sounds better, and he seemed okay with it. So we're going with playoff beard. And if the Wild somehow manage to make it to the Cup finals, you'd better believe he'll be looking for a chance to slip the State of Hockey anthem in as an encore to one of our late-season concerts...)