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Former Wild goaltender Niklas Backstrom named Blue Jackets goaltending coach

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:01:45 GMT

After making a name for himself as a franchise goaltender for the Wild more than a decade ago, Niklas Backstrom will now serve as the goaltending coach for the Columbus Blue Jackets.The official announcement from Blue Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekalainen came on Wednesday. Previously, the 45-year-old Backstrom had served as a different goaltending coach within the organization.As a player, Backstrom was a standout overseas before he settled in with the Wild. He finished his NHL career with a 196-144-50 record, a 2.49 goals against average and .914 save percentage across 413 games. Though he spent most of his time with the Wild, he actually finished his NHL playing career with the Calgary Flames.After leaving the NHL for good, the Helsinki, Finland, native returned home, where he continued to play for a few more years. He retired upon the conclusion of the 2018-19 season, wrapping up a professional career than spanned more than 20 years.Related ArticlesMinnesota Wild | ...

The British pop band led by Taylor Swift’s ex Matty Healy will headline Target Center in October

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:01:45 GMT

The 1975 — the British pop band led by Taylor Swift’s recent fling Matty Healy — will play their biggest local show to date when they headline Target Center in downtown Minneapolis on Oct. 26.Tickets go on sale at 10 a.m. June 23 through Axs, the same day Taylor plays the first of two nights at U.S. Bank Stadium. Neither the promoter nor the venue announced ticket prices.Healy and his bandmates first performed together while they were teenagers, with Healy citing Talking Heads, My Bloody Valentine, Ride and Michael Jackson as musical influences. The band’s 2013 self-titled debut topped the charts in England and went platinum in the States.Each one of the 1975’s subsequent five albums hit No. 1 in England and the Top 10 here. Their biggest hits include “Chocolate,” “Love Me,” “Somebody Else,” “Love It If We Made It,” “It’s Not Living (If It’s Not with You)” and “If You’re Too Shy (Let Me Know).”The 1975 is known for heavy touring and th...

Kirk Cousins leading Vikings his way, from Jersey Day at practice facility to team dinners at Chili’s

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:01:45 GMT

Kirk Cousins grew up in the golden age of music videos. He spent large chunks of his free time as a kid watching them, gravitating toward the likes of rapper 50 Cent, and filling his closet with jerseys because of that.“When I was growing up, the 50 Cent music videos, it was all jerseys,'” Cousins said. “Then they just disappeared. I don’t know where they went. I’m trying to bring them back.”Which explains why the 34-year-old quarterback orchestrated an inaugural Jersey Day at TCO Performance Center this week.There were a few Bobby Boucher jerseys from The Waterboy, Charlie Conway jerseys from Mighty Ducks, and everything in between. As for Cousins, he rocked a throwback Allen Iverson jersey, while head coach Kevin O’Connell went with an Anthony Edwards jersey to keep it local.The winner of the Jersey Day by vote? That would be cornerback Byron Murphy, who donned a head-to-toe Mike Bibby outfit, a homage to his cousin’s time with the V...

Class 4A baseball semifinal: Rosemount 12, Edina 2

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:01:45 GMT

It took the Rosemount baseball team five innings before it started hitting the ball. Once the Irish started, it was hard to stop.With just one hit in the book and trailing Edina 2-0, Rosemount’s hitters gathered to discuss their lack of success against Hornets starting pitcher Luke Vitt, who had faced only 15 batters through five innings.The goal was to stop chasing balls and popping up on contact.“We decided to make sure it’s our pitch; if it’s not there, don’t swing and get on base,” Irish shortstop Carson Blume said. “Then good things happen.”Rosemount responded by sending 14 batters to the plate and scoring 10 runs in the sixth and seventh innings and rode the outburst to a 12-2 victory in a Class 4A state baseball semifinal game at CHS Field.Blume was 2 for 4 with a walk, a triple and two-run double, and Cam Richardson and Jake Schimmel each hit two-run doubles as the top-seeded Irish (19-6) advanced to an all-East Metro final against No. 2 seed East Ridge (19-8) on Friday.Cart...

Supreme Court set to rule on legality of affirmative action in college admissions. Here's what to know

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:01:45 GMT

The Supreme Court is set to rule any day on a case that could prevent universities from considering race as a factor in their admissions process, potentially throwing a wrench in the process many top U.S. institutions use to select from their applicant pool.  The conservative-leaning court is considering two similar cases against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) brought on by the conservative group Students for Fair Admissions, which has argued the schools’ admission processes have discriminated against white and Asian American applicants. If the court rules for the students, the decision would upend decades of precedent for the limited use of race as a factor in the process, making it one of the biggest reversals for the Supreme Court since it overturned Roe v. Wade last year.The case also has the potential to force many of the country’s top institutions to change the way they admit students and find race-neutral alternatives to promote d...

A researcher wants to study the effect of Denver’s reform policies. The superintendent has qualms.

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:01:45 GMT

Denver Superintendent Alex Marrero doesn’t want a University of Colorado Denver researcher to access student data to study the effects of the previous decade’s education reform policies. Parker Baxter, who directs the University of Colorado Denver’s Center for Education Policy Analysis, was the lead author of a study released last year that found significant improvements in student test scores and graduation rates during the time Denver Public Schools was most invested in education reform strategies. Two critiques of the study were that it didn’t isolate the effects of particular strategies, such as closing schools with persistently low test scores or opening new charter schools, and that it didn’t fully account for changes in the student population of Denver, which grew by some 20,000 children during the same time period. Related ArticlesEducation | How rising violence, kids with guns have pushed Denver’s school board toward bringing police back to campus Educ...

Colorado plastic surgeon acquitted of homicide in teen patient’s death, convicted on lesser charges

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:01:45 GMT

Family photoEmmalyn Nhi NguyenA Colorado plastic surgeon on Wednesday was found not guilty of the most serious charges he faced in a teenage patient’s death, but was convicted on less serious counts after a week-long jury trial in Arapahoe County District Court.Jurors found Dr. Geoffrey Kim not guilty of negligent homicide in the death of 19-year-old patient Emmalyn Nguyen, but found him guilty of attempted reckless manslaughter and guilty of obstructing a telephone after he failed to call for help for hours after Nguyen suffered cardiac arrest.Attempted reckless homicide is a Class 5 felony in Colorado, which is typically punishable by between one and three years in prison. Obstructing a telephone is a misdemeanor. Kim is set to be sentenced on Sept. 8.Nguyen went to Kim for breast augmentation surgery in August 2019, when she was 18, but she suffered cardiac arrest after receiving anesthesia, fell into a coma and died 14 months later, in October 2020.Prosecutors argued that ...

Flagler Reservoir closed by recent heavy rains and flooding

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:01:45 GMT

Flagler Reservoir has been closed by heavy rains that have caused water to breach the spillway and flood roads in the area.The closure is ordered to address safety concerns created by the flooding, Colorado Parks and Wildlife said in a news release.Flagler Reservoir, in the Flagler Reservoir State Wildlife Area, will be closed indefinitely, the CPW said.“We are closing it to protect the public,” CPW Director Jeff Davis said in the release. “It is not safe to drive on the county road that crosses the dam. And CPW is concerned about the houses below the dam in the event we get more rain in the area later this week, as forecast.”Flagler Reservoir is a part of the 400-acre wildlife area located about five miles east of the town of Flagler. The reservoir is north of Interstate 70 in Kit Carson County.The reservoir was drained in August 2017 under a release order from the Colorado Division of Water Resources, according to the release. The gate on the dam has remained open and the reservoi...

Denver man arrested for allegedly soliciting Texas 15-year-old

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:01:45 GMT

DENVER — A Denver man was arrested for allegedly soliciting a Central Texas teen.The 15-year-old disappeared from the backyard of her home in Copperas Cove, Texas — located 75 miles north of Austin — around 7:30 p.m. on Monday. It is believed she was picked up by a man in an unknown vehicle.The teen had been communicating with the man through social media, according to the Copperas Cove Police Department.Copperas Cove PD, with help from the Texas Department of Public Safety Fusion Center, identified the man as Simon Ryan Salais IV, 33, of Denver.Full story via Denver7

Return to Oz: Going Up David Lynch’s Butt With Movies About Movies

Published Fri, 07 Feb 2025 12:01:45 GMT

It’s more difficult than it’s ever been to get a film distributed and into actual brick-and-mortar movie theaters, but here comes Alexandre O. Philippe’s ruminative crit-essay Lynch/Oz, a documentary, it seems, only a film critic could love. And who cares about them? Can precious screen space suffer the indulgence of a speculative non-narrative film about film, not to mention a deep-reading geekfest about David Lynch, America’s most recalcitrant niche auteur?But wait, haven’t we already been served plenty of ripe plates of critical-theoretical exegesis, like Philippe’s 2017 78/52 (a 91-minute exploration of Psycho’s shower scene) and 2019 Memory: The Origins of Alien; Nina Menkes’s Brainwashed: Sex-Camera-Power (2022); Kent Jones’s Hitchcock/Truffaut (2015); Ross Lipman’s NotFilm (2015); Rodney Ascher’s pro-am doc on The Shining, Room 237 (2012); Mark Cousins’s 15-hour The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011); etc.? Are the movie geeks on the rise? Is everyone a film critic now — even f...