6 Reasons Erik Johnson Should Not Consider the Minnesota Wild

#6: Minnesota Weather is Brutal

Here in Colorado, we get 300 days of sunshine a year. Some of those days may be brittle and cold, but there’s the sun. (It’s also true that many of those days are partially cloudy for some of the time.) Veteran winger Alex Tanguay even hooked fellow veteran winger Jarome Iginla into finishing his career here because of all that sun. (True story — I asked him about it on an open Twitter day.)

St. Paul Minnesota, home of the Wild, gets only 95 days of full sun and about 100 partially sunny days a year. That’s a full third fewer than Denver. That’s over three whole months of less sunshine. (True statistic — I got it here.)

Sunshine aside, it’s cold enough in Minnesota to freeze over your backyard as a hockey rink. As cool as it would be to have your own hockey rink in your backyard, imagine how cold it has to get. Or don’t imagine — in hockey season, the average temperature is around 20 F — that’s factoring in a “high” of 31 F and a low of 7 F. Record low is -60.

The blizzard of December, 2010, Minnesota style! This is the patio set on the top of the elevated deck.

Photo credit: Jon De Jong, Flickr

On the flip side, hockey season in Colorado heralds temperatures around 40 F. It’s cold, but not cold enough to maintain — or even start — a hockey rink in your backyard. The record low in Denver is -11, and that was set in 1898. Otherwise, the city gets to 1 F every now and again — and the news advises people to stay in.

This February, we had 70-degree days. No joke.

Erik Johnson travels with the team, of course, so he won’t always have to be home to suffer through those bitterly cold days. He’s got dogs to consider, though. Poor pooches.