KSTP Year in Review: 2017's Top Minnesota Sports Stories

Here are the top stories for each professional sports team, and the best from the Gophers, as well.

1. The Minnesota Lynx Win 2017 WNBA Championship

• The Minnesota Lynx are no strangers to celebration. Maya Moore, Lindsay Whalen and a proud core have danced in the confetti and bathed in bubbly four times now. Boring? Hardly. If anything, the champagne tastes sweeter than ever. Sylvia Fowles had 17 points and broke her own WNBA Finals record by grabbing 20 rebounds to lead the Lynx to their fourth championship in seven years with an 85-76 victory over the Los Angeles Sparks in Game 5 on Oct. 4.
  

  Minnesota Lynx's Maya Moore, right, and teammates celebrate after they won the WNBA Finals Championship.

  AP/Jim Mone

2. Twins Historic Turnaround

• From worst to wild card, the Minnesota Twins completed a most remarkable reversal. A season after winning just 59 games, the Twins became the first team to lose at least 100 and then make the postseason the following year. Manager Paul Molitor was rewarded for his team's feat with the American League Manager of the Year Award.

3. Keenum's Ascendance Leads to Vikings Division Championship 

• Case Keenum began the season second on the quarterback depth chart behind Sam Bradford, with the return of injured Teddy Bridgewater all but imminent. But all the 29-year-old Brownwood, Texas, native has done is lead the team to a 13-3 record, a division championship and a first-round bye in the playoffs. 

4. Minnesota Wild Set Franchise High Win Total

• The Minnesota Wild went 49-25-8 and notched 106 points, marking the team's best regular season ever. The team won 48 games in 2006-07. Despite the strong regular season, the Wild fell to the Blues in five games in the first round of the playoffs to end their season. The team's 2017-18 season hasn't started quite as strong; the team sits at 20-16-3 just shy of the season's halfway mark, good for fifth place in the Western Conference's Central Division.

5. Timberwolves Acquire Jimmy Butler, Dare to Reach Potential 

• Jimmy Butler made a splash upon his arrival in Minnesota over the summer when he provided his phone number during a media event and encouraged critics to contact him. The Timberwolves of late each year seem to generate lofty preseason expectations, but this year, largely because of Butler and his leadership, the team is living up to the hype. The team is 22-14 and sits in in fourth place in the Western Conference, there-and-a-half games behind San Antonio. The young, talented squad led by Butler, Karl-Anthony Towns and the struggling Andrew Wiggins is primed to reach the playoffs for the first time since the 2003-04 season. 

6. Minnesota Gophers

The biggest on-the-court Gophers stories were:

• Softball and volleyball teams ascend national rankings;
• P.J. Fleck hired as head football coach;
• Men's basketball team makes NCAA tournament;
• Men's hockey team wins NCAA-record sixth-straight conference title;
• Women's hockey team beats rival UMD in Duluth to advance to sixth-straight Frozen Four.