Today’s version of the Weekend Links actually included two different versions of the introduction. Mr. Rand chose the version you see below. I’ll post the other version as a standalone rant. As always, these links appeared first at RandBall, which is truly the happiest place on earth.

Last night, the NHL Players Association announced that it was blocking the league’s realignment plan for next season. This is the plan that would have introduced a whole bunch of great things, including renewed Minnesota rivalries with Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, and Winnipeg. Unfortunately, the NHLPA viewed it as a shot across the bow in the upcoming CBA negotations, and decided to move to block the plan.

I guess, for us hockey fans, it’s nice to see that nothing changes. The loss of an entire season was a slap in the face and a reminder that those that run the NHL, the game’s pinnacle, didn’t particularly care about the league’s fans. We all came flooding back after that labor stoppage, almost as though nothing had ever happened. It’s good to have a reminder that, no matter how well things are going, those involved in the labor negotiations care more about posturing than they do about something good for the league’s fans.

On with the links:

*With the news that Francisco Liriano is going to throw a few innings in Dominican winter ball this year, Parker Hageman tells us what to watch for. Basically, Liriano is the worst pitcher in the league at getting ahead in the count, and needs to work on that. (Alas, in his first outing in winter ball, he fell behind in the count to six of the eight hitters.)

*Brandon Warne at Twinkie Town has a Q&A with Twins hitting coach Joe Vavra, which illuminates Vavra’s coaching strategy in a number of ways.

*Sean Conboy at The Classical writes about concussions, which again came to the forefront when Browns quarterback Colt McCoy, who was allowed to return to the game by the Browns medical staff after getting his clock cleaned against the Steelers, couldn’t afterwards remember playing in the second half of the game.

*And finally: Learn to be a quarterback, with the help of Chris Brown at the Smart Football blog, plus his helpers Bill Walsh and Joe Montana.

That’ll do it for me. We will not be discussing the weather today, in the hopes that it continues like this until March.

A month ago, the NHL announced a realignment plan for next season. It was filled with wonderful features for fans. Every team would visit every other team each year, which meant no more waiting three or four years for marquee teams from the other conference to visit. The first two rounds of the playoffs would be intra-divisional, meaning a return to the turn-it-to-11 divisional rivalries that can only be born in the playoffs. And – best of all for Wild fans – the geographical realignment meant an end to some of the more cringe-inducing failures of map-reading particular to the NHL, which currently assumes that Winnipeg is in Tennessee and St. Paul is somewhere near Boise.

Most fans seemed excited about the plan, especially here in Minnesota, where the Wild would renew divisional rivalries from the North Stars days – Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, and Winnipeg chief among them. It seemed to be a big step forward for hockey. Unfortunately, it turns out hockey still can’t do anything right, especially the charlatans over in the player’s union. The NHLPA has hired Don Fehr, who you might remember as the guy who helped cancel the 1994 World Series, to represent them in the next round of the CBA negotiations. Don and company didn’t like that the NHL enacted this plan unilaterally. And so they manufactured some concern about travel and division structure and blocked the realignment. Maybe the players are right, and some teams will have worse travel schedules. I can’t say I particularly care. This was going to be a great thing for us fans, and the NHLPA is blocking it because they want to start the posturing for the next CBA right away.

Well, I hope the players lose. Every part of the negotiation. I hope they end up with a maximum salary of $500,000, and if they want Gatorade on the bench, I hope they have to get it out of a vending machine. I hope they have to change planes in Atlanta on every road trip, no matter where they’re going, and that their flights have no complimentary snacks of any kind. I hope that at the Xcel Energy Center, Wild player rep Nick Schultz gets booed every time he touches the puck like he’s Dany Heatley playing a road game.

In pretty much every CBA negotation, the sticking point is owners that can’t control themselves and want the CBA to do it for them. This time – unless the NHLPA relents and lets realignment go ahead – I hope the owners win, and grind the union into the dust.

Oh, and I hope Don Fehr has hemorrhoids for the rest of his life.

Over at Twinkie Town, I went through a few resolutions for 2012.

I also used the word “sesquipedalian” (given to using long words) in describing Kevin Slowey, which I’m fairly proud of, partially because merely using the word means that you yourself are guilty of the crime described therein. It’s this sort of linguistic paradox that makes me happy.

I don’t know why, exactly, but for the second year in a row my Christmas-week column at Twinkie Town was a takeoff on Larry King’s old USA Today columns.

I did it last year because it seemed like fun. I did it this year because I couldn’t think of anything else.

I almost started this post writing about cricket. I get so self-absorbed, I forget that precisely 0% of the people reading the Weekend Links know about cricket or care to know more. Still worked it in at the end, though, just to stay true to myself. As always, these links appeared first at RandBall, where you cannot call someone “despotic” even if they are. (Stupid media standards.)

It looks like there’s a pretty high chance we’re going to have a warm, snowless Christmas this year. In the interest of making the most of this, I’d like to present my Top Three Sports To Play Outside On Christmas So You’ll Have A Story To Tell The Kids:

On with the links:

*Everybody involved with hockey in any way should read this column from former goaltender and Canadian MP Ken Dryden.

*Parker Hageman thinks Josh Willingham is perfect for Target Field. This is mostly because nobody except Jim Thome is strong enough to consistently hit the ball out of Target Field between the power alleys.

*Teemu Selanne is making his return to Winnipeg tonight, for the first time since the Jets ditched town for Phoenix. The hockey humorists at Down Goes Brown take a look back at his career.

That’ll do it for me, except to note this: I was pretty sure that USA cricket couldn’t get any more dysfunctional, what with the president canceling elections and such. Then, the national team captain got arrested for mortgage fraud, faces 20 years in prison, and can’t play in tournaments because the feds confiscated his passport. This is also the sport in which three famous international players went to jail for fixing games. Forget NBA or NFL labor disputes: cricket knows how to do dysfunction right.

Thursday, it was announced that former Portland guard Bonzi Wells would be signing with the Timberwolves. Wells hadn’t played in the NBA for more than three years and was a known hothead – he was a big part of the Jail Blazers era in Portland – so it was a curious decision.

Wells will likely remain a practice / camp player, a footnote in Timberwolves history. With that in mind, I put together the top ten reasons the Wolves signed Bonzi Wells.

Always taking on the big subjects here, aren’t I?

Early in the second period of Wednesday night’s Wild-Blackhawks game, tough guys Brad Staubitz and Daniel Carcillo dropped the gloves at center ice. Staubitz, representing Minnesota, got Carcillo’s helmet off, and late in the bout, he got inside Carcillo, got a good handful of jersey, and proceeded to pound Carcillo a few times before wrestling him to the ice.

I understand why this fight happened. The Wild, playing for the second time in two nights, had skated sleepily for the game’s first twenty-odd minutes, and Staubitz used his fists to get the team going. It worked, too, as Minnesota responded right away with its first good shift of the game. The Wild bench got fired up and the team seemed to wake up, and it was clear that Staubitz had done his job.

But here’s the part that gets me. Fighting in the NHL is supposed to be in defense of “the code,” where fighters defend the honor of skill players and police the other team’s bruisers by swinging fists. It’s treated as a respected, even honorable, part of the league. And I’m not going to try to argue that there aren’t situations in which a good brawl seems warranted – think of Brad May sucker-punching Kim Johnsson during the playoffs several years ago, or Chris Kunitz pulling Brent Burns’s hair during a pileup during that same Ducks-Wild series.

But it seems to me that most of today’s NHL fights don’t involve Dave Semenko looking out for Wayne Gretzky. Most of them seem to fall into one of two categories:

1. Tough guy from Team A, trying to fire up his team or set an example or otherwise prove a point, challenges tough guy from Team B and they duke it out, gladiators in the middle of the ice.
2. Player from Team A gets hit with a hard, but often legal, bodycheck. Another player from Team A rushes after the bodychecker from Team B and tries to immediately goad the checker into a fight.

The way fighting is supposed to work is that Team A is going after Team B for dangerous play – a hit to the head or a run at the goaltender, or something similarly designed to risk injury to an opposing player. But these situations don’t result in fights, they result in scrums and wrestling matches, as both teams pile in to the inevitable fray. The point of fighting – doling out eye-for-an-eye justice for headhunters and goons – is lost.

I get why fighting’s allowed in the NHL. And I agree that in some situations it may even be desirable. But legalizing these situations also means that sometimes one of the team’s guys has to fight just for playing physically, or even more stupidly, because somebody on the other team really, really wants to fight. And to me, the pointlessness of those fights may outweigh the occasional necessity of keeping fighting as a part of the game.

The Twins, who lost 99 games in 2011, spent the first portion of their offseason trying to reassemble that 2011 team for another run in 2012. It seemed like a good time to break out another Twinhua News Agency post.

Later on that Monday, rumors began to fly that Minnesota was looking to sign Oakland outfielder Josh Willingham and let Michael Cuddyer walk. Clearly, the satire found its mark at the highest levels. (Or something.)

*Today’s Weekend Links are the first written by someone who’s middle-aged. Do they seem grumpier? Than usual? Okay, let’s be honest – I probably couldn’t get a lot grumpier. As always, these appeared first at RandBall, your home for bacon enthusiasm. *

So, unless there’s some big news early today, Michael Cuddyer hasn’t yet accepted the Twins’ contract offer. That’s fine, and it’s his right. In some ways, he seems to be this year’s version of Carl Pavano – hoping for big things in free agency, but a little old and with enough question marks to scare other teams away from taking on a big contract and giving up a draft pick. So good luck to him on getting as much money as he can get.

I do, however, have to say this. Part of the reason Joe Nathan left, according to the closer, was that he wanted to play for a winner. We’ve heard reports that Cuddyer also wants to play for a winner, which is part of the reason why he hasn’t already re-signed with the Twins. Now, I get that the Twins don’t seem close to being a winning team right now. But it feels semi-hypocritical that two guys who were on the team for all of 2011 can stand up and say, “This team doesn’t look like a winner, and I should know – I was a big part of that.” Give Matt Capps credit. I hated the Capps signing, but at least he stood up and said something along the lines of, “I was awful last year, and I want to help put it right.”

This week’s links:

*You’ll have to know a bit of background on the forthcoming National Collegiate Hockey Conference to find this funny. If you know the story so far, though, Chris at the Western College Hockey Blog has my favorite post of the week.

*Spencer Hall spends a few thousand words ranking this year’s college football bowl games from 1-35, from the culture clash of Oregon and Wisconsin at the top, to the factory of sad that is Illinois vs. UCLA at the bottom.

*FOX is going to air Manchester United vs. Arsenal live, the morning of the NFC Championship Game. If Terry Bradshaw tries to commentate on the highlights of the match during the pregame show, the world may collapse.

*In one of the weirdest stories you’ll ever read, a Dutch woman who won two medals in hand cycling at the Beijing Paralympic Games was training in Spain when another cyclist ran into her. While recovering from the accident, she regained use of her legs – and now is on track to compete in the 2016 Olympics.

That’ll do it for me this week. In closing, I’d like to offer a big welcome back to NBA fans.

I think making up an entirely fictional personality for Darko Milicic has been one of my favorite things to write.  I don’t know why I decided that Darko should think Swedes are idiots, or love French Toast, or try to nickname Wes Johnson “Kill Shark,” but it’s been fun.

In the beginning, Darko just wanted to stay in Minnesota – and later was thrilled to re-sign. Unfortunately, he then couldn’t shoot to save himself. And now, he’s back, and ready for the lockout to end and the 2011-12 season to begin, in a post titled “I, Darko, Am Ready For Basketballs.”

The Canis Hoopus commenters sometimes get on me for making fun of Milicic. I want to be clear that he is my favorite Timberwolf, and I hope he scores 30 points a game and his left-handed hook becomes famous as one of the great moves in NBA history. It’s just fun to poke fun at him until that happens.