While it has been rebranded as Grand Casino Arena, it\u2019s going to be a long time before most Minnesotans can get themselves to think of the Wild\u2019s home rink in downtown St. Paul as anything other than The X.<\/p>\n
That includes diehard Wild fan Jon Dusing, who recently bought the iconic \u201cX\u201d that used to sit atop the Xcel Energy Center, and is doing his part to keep memories of the old building\u2019s name alive.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t sure exactly what I\u2019d do with it,\u201d said Dusing, a Wild season ticket holder, who grew up in Iowa and has spent the past 20 years living in Minnesota. \u201cIt all became clear to me once it got closer to the playoffs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Though the sale of the \u201cX\u201d has been public for about a month and a half since it was auctioned off by the Minnesota Wild Foundation \u2014 as well as the winning bid of more than $20,000 \u2014 the new owner of the single letter hadn\u2019t been widely revealed.<\/p>\n
Until Dusing, 44, put out a viral social media post over the weekend that has more than 320,000 views. The video started with him standing alongside the \u201cX\u201d in the front yard of his home in Lino Lakes. He then walked out of the frame and revealed what was going to happen every time the Wild scored a goal in their first-round series with the Dallas Stars.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an impressive spectacle put together by Dusing himself that features the \u201cX\u201d being lit up in red and the background lighting up green. There\u2019s a goal horn and a goal light to go along with smoke and pyrotechnics. There\u2019s even the Wild\u2019s goal song \u2014 \u201cShout\u201d by The Isley Brothers \u2014 blaring over the loud speakers to pull everything together.<\/p>\n
All available at the push of a button.<\/p>\n
\u201cI programmed it all so it runs from my phone,\u201d said Dusing, chief executive of Fanmaker, a media company that makes software for various sports teams. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing more fun than pushing a button and having fire go off in the front yard.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maybe the funniest part of the whole ordeal was that Dusing did all of this preparation only to have puck drop for Game 1 between the Wild and the Stars go off at 4:30 p.m. That took away from some of the production value for Dusing despite being able to push the button a half dozen times in what ended up being a 6-1 win for the Wild.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t as exciting with the lights and stuff,\u201d Dusing said with a laugh. \u201cI\u2019m definitely looking forward to being able to do it right.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also a livestream of the celebration for anybody that wants to follow along from afar.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to share it with everybody,\u201d Dusing said. \u201cThat\u2019s why I put it in the front yard and not just in my house lit up.\u201d<\/p>\n
If everything goes according to plan for Dusing, he will be pushing that button on his phone quite a bit moving forward. That means the \u201cX\u201d will continue to be prominently displayed for everybody to see it.<\/p>\n
Maybe all the way to the Stanley Cup.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re just going to take it round by round,\u201d Dusing said with a laugh. \u201cHopefully in a couple of months we can bring it to the parade.\u201d<\/p>\n
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This story was written by one of our partner news agencies. Forum Communications Company uses content from agencies such as Reuters, Kaiser Health News, Tribune News Service and others to provide a wider range of news to our readers. Learn more about the news services FCC uses here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While it has been rebranded as Grand Casino Arena, it\u2019s going to be a long time before most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5118],"tags":[5,161,38,5280,4,162],"class_list":{"0":"post-558467","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-wild","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-minnesota","10":"tag-minnesota-wild","11":"tag-minnesotawild","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-wild"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116455861335787516","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}