First came the free fall, with Minnesota losing its final five games of the Professional Women’s Hockey League regular season. Then came what amounted to a free pass, which came despite being unable to take advantage of having its playoff fate in its own hands heading down the stretch.

Minnesota forward Abby Boreen (24) celebrates after scoring against Ottawa during the second period of a PWHL hockey game Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2024, in St. Paul, Minn. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

Now, Minnesota must find a way to return to playing free and easy if it is going to upset top-seed Toronto in the best-of-five PWHL semifinal. Games 1 and 2 will be played Wednesday and Friday in Toronto. Game 3 is set for Monday at Xcel Energy Center.

“Thankfully, the hockey gods allowed us to get in when we couldn’t take care of our own business,” Minnesota general manager Natalie Darwitz said. “I hope the team is refreshed and renewed, knowing that they might have had something taken away from them, and they got a second life.”

Asked where he feels the team is mentally in advance of Game 1, head coach Ken Klee said he believes there is a sense of relief.

“The pressure was mounting a bit,” Klee said. “There was a lot with the travel coming off the break. Then losing a game in the last minute in Montreal. Then losing a game with two seconds to go against Boston.

“I just think there was a lot of mental stress on us. But now we’re 0-0 now like the other three teams, and we’re excited to go.”

Minnesota’s calling card for most of the season has been a stingy defense backed up by solid goaltending. But it gave up 19 goals in the five-game losing streak, an average of 3.8 per game.

The team mantra is getting back to playing its game.

“I think you throw the results out and then take some of the good and the bad that happened in those five games,” forward Kelly Pannek said. “At this point, take what we can learn, as well as the positives.”

Klee said the key will be “getting back to doing the little things well.”

“Obviously, special teams are going to be key,” Klee added. “Our penalty kill needs to be better, our power play needs to be better. We’ve shown spurts that we can do it. It’s just about being consistent.”

Minnesota was in the hunt for the regular season title until the five-game skid. It beat Toronto 3-1 in the first meeting between the teams and lost in overtime in one of its three losses to Toronto.

“We know the talent we have on the ice,” Darwitz said. “We know what we can do. Obviously we’re in a little bit of a rut right now, and it takes just one bounce, one momentum change, to get out of that.”

Toronto scored a league-high 69 goals during the regular season while allowing a league-low 50. The offense is led by likely league Most Valuable Player Natalie Spooner, who led the PWHL in goals (20) and points (27). Right behind her is teammate Sarah Nurse, who collected 11 goals and 12 assists.

Minnesota can counter with some stars of its own, including Kendall Coyne Schofield and Taylor Heise, who were key members of Team USA in the World Championship, and top goal scorer Grace Zumwinkle.

“Now we need our big players to play big,” Klee said. “There’s no hiding from it, and I think they’re going to embrace it.”

Minnesota will get a boost with the return of forward Abby Boreen to the lineup. Boreen’s availability this season has been limited while she attends pharmacy school at the U. She’s back on a final 10-day contract.

When Boreen’s been in the lineup she has been productive, scoring four goals in nine games. She adds some physical play up front, which will be needed against Toronto.

“I don’t think that there’s any doubt that we’re a very physical team, and we like to play fast,” Toronto captain Blayre Turnbull said. “When you look at NHL teams that are successful in the playoffs, they are teams that are able to sustain a physical game and a fast game over a series.

“We’re well equipped for the playoffs.”

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When Harvey Fierstein’s “Torch Song Trilogy” hit Broadway in 1982, audiences had never met anyone quite like Arnold Beckoff. Here was a 20-something gay man, a drag queen who sometimes visited the orgies in the seedy back rooms of New York gay bars, but was actually seeking love, a long-term commitment and a family. And audiences embraced it, as did the Tony Awards (it won two, including “Best Play”).

In 2017, Fierstein revised it, cutting almost 90 minutes off its original four-hour length and redubbing it “Torch Song.” And thank you to St. Paul’s Six Points Theater for recognizing it as a too-long neglected masterpiece. Six Points is presenting a production of “Torch Song” that’s funny and heartbreaking, incisive and insightful. And it features one of the local performances of the year in Neal Beckman’s Arnold, sometimes exasperating in his neuroses, but warm, honest, endearing and ceaselessly captivating.

When we meet Arnold, he’s addressing us while dressing, delivering a monologue while transforming into Virginia Hamm, his current drag queen persona. Beckman so thoroughly inhabits the role that he never broke character at the performance I attended when an audience member tumbled down a staircase on the way to her seat. He conversed with her, making sure she was uninjured and joking about his first time in heels and making a dramatic entrance.

“Torch Song” began life as three one-act plays, and a linchpin of the three scenes we experience is Arnold’s on-again, off-again romance with Ed, a bisexual man with commitment issues. Fierstein’s script feels note-perfect in its arguments and reconciliations, witty banter and sad silences as it takes us to a farmhouse weekend to which Arnold and Ed bring new partners of different genders.

Finally, we meet the family, as Arnold introduces his perpetually disapproving mother to the domestic life he’s fashioned by taking in a foster child. It’s during that final act that “Torch Song” moves beyond being an engaging character study and becomes a powerful, deeply moving life lesson.

With his deft direction, Craig Johnson has clearly invited his six actors to make their characters as genuine and relatable as possible. And each performance engages, from Steve Mallers’ uncertain Ed to Nancy Marvy’s layered take on Arnold’s mother, who provides the spark for the play’s climactic conflagration. And Beckman doesn’t steal every scene, for Kendall Kent matches him in energy and emotional openness as Ed’s partner, Laurel.

While Six Points’ stage at the Highland Park Community Center is a small one, director Johnson and set designer Michael Hoover make it a disarmingly intimate setting for this story, particularly when the wall spins to plunge us into a farmhouse scene that takes place entirely within a king-sized bed that the four characters occupy “Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice”-style, if any readers remember that 1969 movie.

From left: Kendall Kent as Laurel;  J. Antonio Teodoro, standing, as Alan; Neal Beckman, sitting on bed, as Arnold; and Steve Mallers, sitting on floor, as Ed in Six Points Theater’s production of Harvey Fierstein’s comedy “Torch Song.” (Sarah Whiting / Six Points Theater)

“Torch Song” is such a terrific play that you might find yourself contemplating why we haven’t seen productions of it more often. A forbidding length? Subject matter for which producers thought audiences unprepared? Whatever the case, Six Points deserves kudos for having it mark the company’s 30th anniversary (it was previously known as Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company). And for allowing the always impressive Beckman the breakout performance he’s earned.

Six Points Theater’s ‘Torch Song’

When: Through May 19

Where: Highland Park Community Center, 1978 Ford Pkwy., St. Paul

Tickets: $40-$15, available at 651-647-4315 or sixpointstheater.org

Capsule: A neglected masterpiece of a play receives an excellent staging.

Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.

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If Mitch Garver needs a reminder that he was part of major league history, he has the bobble head. Five relative likenesses of Twins players who, in 2019, became the first five major league teammates to hit at least 30 home runs in a season.

“Yeah, I’ve got the bobblehead, I’ve got the pictures,” the veteran catcher/designated hitter said before Seattle and Minnesota played the second of a four-game series at Target Field on Tuesday. “It’s really cool. It seems like a long time ago.”

And not necessarily because it was five years ago, or because Garver has now played for two other teams, and not necessarily because the Mariners designated hitter won a World Series last season with the Texas Rangers.

It’s the pitching.

The Atlanta Braves equaled the Twins’ feat last season, with five players combining for 205 home runs while team tied the Twins’ team MLB mark of 307. But imaging that happening this season, or anytime soon, is difficult, Garver said.

“A lot has changed. A lot has changed,” he said. “ I would say ’22 going into ’23 was when pitching really changed.”

Garver, Nelson Cruz, Max Kepler, Eddie Rosario and Miguel Sano combined for 174 of the Twins’ home runs as they smashed the previous team record of 267 by the 2018 New York Yankees with 307 home runs. In fact, four teams surpassed the Yankees record in 2019 as major league teams hit a record 6,776 home runs.

At the time, there was speculation that it was due in part to a juiced ball. But offense is down so far this season, and there haven’t been many conspiracy theories as to why. It’s probably because it’s widely known that major league pitching is having a renaissance.

Baseball’s average OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging) before Tuesday was .695, and while lot can change certainly, it’s worth noting that since the expansion era began in 1961, baseball has had a combined OPS of less than .700 only 14 times, the last in 1989 (.695). The leagues’ combined 7,656 strikeouts through April rank second only to 2019 (7,748) since 1961.

Pitchers aren’t just throwing harder — the average fastball in 2023 was 94.2 mph compared to 91.9 mph in 2008 — they’re throwing more pitches. Both can be attributed to computer-aided physiological analysis that helps pinpoint how pitchers throw and, consequently, what pitches they might be particularly good at.

“Guys started developing two fastballs, sometimes three if you include a cutter,” Garver said. “And they have multiple breaking balls. Everyone has a changeup now. Pitching has gone through so many waves since I’ve been in the big leagues, it’s changed so much that it’s hard to keep up.”

It’s not uncommon for players to throw six pitches now. Some used to make a career out of two, although Twins manager Rocco Baldelli, a career .278 hitter in seven major league seasons, said there were pitchers that threw six pitches when he played (2003-10).

“Well, some guys did,” he said, “but they were throwing 90 (mph).”

Since those five Twins each hit 30 home runs, MLB’s combined homers have been fewer than 6,000 total in the four non-COVID seasons, bottoming out at 5,215 in 2022. Through April, major league teams were on pace to hit 4,878, which would be the lowest home run total since 2008.

It’s only going to get worse, or better if you’re talking to a pitching coach, Badelli said, as batters fight to catch up with the heat and advanced scouting. “We know what guys hit and what they generally don’t hit, and they just don’t get the pitches that they hit anymore,” the manager said.

Garver, who signed a two-year, $24 million contract with Seattle in the offseason, agreed with his former manager.

“It’s going to be really challenging for hitters the next few years.”

The best defensive player on the best defensive team is — justly — the NBA Defensive Player of the Year.

Minnesota Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert drives to the basket against the Phoenix Suns during the first half of Game 4 of an NBA basketball first-round playoff series Sunday, April 28, 2024, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

And, for the fourth time in his career — tying an NBA record — that player is Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert.

Gobert joins Dikembe Mutombo and Ben Wallace as the only four-time winners. Gobert is the first Timberwolves player to receive the honor after he won each of his previous three awards as a member of the Utah Jazz.

The news was announced on TNT’s tip-off show Tuesday. Gobert — who welcomed his first child, Romeo, into the world on Monday — was joined at his home by teammate Karl-Anthony Towns.

Gobert received 72 of the 99 first-place votes in a runaway victory, with San Antonio rookie Victor Wembanyama — his fellow Frenchman — finishing in second place after receiving 19 first-place votes. Miami’s Bam Adebayo was third, and the Los Angeles Lakers’ Anthony Davis was fourth. Minnesota’s Jaden McDaniels did not receive any top-three votes.

Gobert said Romeo is “doing great.”

“Just a lot of blessings,” said the big man, who missed Game 2 of the Denver series to witness the birth of his child. “Really grateful.”

After a down season a year ago in which Gobert wasn’t himself physically and Minnesota struggled to adapt defensively to the center’s arrival, the two sides have been a perfect marriage this season.

Gobert was sixth in the NBA in blocked shots this season (2.1) and fourth in defensive rebounds (9.2). Opponents shot just 43 percent from the field when Gobert was the closest defender, a full six percentage points lower than the expected outcome — the biggest differential among players who defended at least 800 shots this season.

FILE -Minnesota Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert reacts after a Sacramento Kings basket during the second half of an NBA basketball game Friday, March 1, 2024, in Minneapolis. Rudy Gobert wins record-tying 4th Defensive Player of the Year award, Tuesday, May 7, 2024 (AP Photo/Abbie Parr, File)

Gobert was both an interior presence who negated a number of attempts at the rim and a big who proved naysayers wrong by successfully defending on the perimeter whenever the opportunity presented itself. He was the head of the snake for a defense that allowed just 108.4 points per 100 possessions, 2.2 points per 100 possessions fewer than Boston, who allowed the second fewest.

Timberwolves coach Chris Finch credited Gobert for setting the defensive culture for Minnesota. Gobert told TNT on Tuesday that the team’s defensive success was a result of “great teamwork.”

“We love to give individual awards and all these things, and it’s great. But you can’t do it alone,” Gobert said. “I really have a lot of gratitude for Tim Connelly, Chris Finch, all my teammates for believing in me, allowing me to do the best every day, and just try to change the culture of being in Minnesota. It’s a credit to the guys for buying in and coming into every single night with the same mindset. We really wanted to be a defensive-minded team, and we’ve been able to do that so far this year.”