Minnesota Mud Puppies. Graphic courtesy: Northwoods League
ROCHESTER, MN (WSAU) — There will still be lingering effects of the COVID-19 outbreak on the 2021 Northwoods League season.
One year after splitting the league up into a handful of divisions and playing a shortened season, the league has announced that the Thunder Bay Border Cats will sit out yet again.
Their place in the Great Plains Division will be filled by the Minnesota Mud Puppies, who will play a half-season schedule consisting only of road games.
The Mud Puppies will step in to fill home dates for all Great Plains Division clubs that were scheduled to host the Border Cats, amounting to a 36 game schedule. They are not scheduled to play the Wisconsin Woodchucks or Wisconsin Rapids Rafters but will have a handful of games against Eau Claire and La Crosse.
The team will appear in the Great Plains Division standings but will not be eligible for the postseason. Their players will be eligible for in-season awards and honors and will be able to be selected for the league’s All-Star game and Major League Dreams showcase.
League officials say the team will stay with host families and train in the Twin Cities area when they aren’t playing.
One-year temporary teams were the norm for the NWL in 2020 as the league looked to fill a partial schedule with as little travel as possible. Temporary teams played in the Bismark and Michigan pods, while the Kenosha Kingfish played a series of games against the temporary K-Town Bobbers.
Players that had committed to Thunder Bay for the 2021 season were dispersed to the remaining 21 NWL teams through a draft last week. The league will begin singing players to the Mud Puppies soon.
Owners of the Thunder Bay franchise say they are planning on playing a full season in 2022. The closure of the US-Canada border during the pandemic has forced several professional teams to play out their seasons in temporary locations in the US and forced the NHL to re-align its Canadian clubs into one division for the current season.
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