Minnesota Vikings News And Links, 6/20

We've almost made it through the week, folks. The last day of the Minnesota Vikings' mandatory mini-camp is going to happen today at Winter Park, so keep your eyes on our site here and on Twitter in case anything breaks on that front.

Since the last time we brought you an Open Thread. . .

-Our big, featured story for the day is Skol Girl's story about how the Sullivan Playground at the U of M Amplatz Children's Hospital has made an impact on the life of her and her family. I'm not going to lie. . .this is one of the best stories to ever grace this website of ours. You owe it to yourselves to read it, although it will probably result in a sudden, overabundance of dust collecting in whatever room your computer is in. (That's the excuse I'm using, anyway.)

-We closed the nominations for our Greatest Viking Of All Time Tournament. We will have the field of 66. . .yes, 66. . .set by tomorrow, as well as our "play-in" game to determine the final spot in the proceedings.

-We also got a little bit of fun from Vikings' kicker Blair Walsh, as he puts together a video of rookie punter Jeff Locke. . .well, as one of our commenters described it yesterday, "Lockeing." (Yeah, intentionally misspelled. So?)

From other outposts across the internet. . .

-According to ESPN's Kevin Seifert, Adrian Peterson is "back to his normal self." This is good.

-Seifert also did a nice mini-blog of the Vikings' mini-camp yesterday.

-Vikings special teams coach Mike Priefer said that the decision to release punter Chris Kluwe was based on performance, a statement that I'm sure everyone will just readily agree with. (Except probably not.)

-Tom Pelissero also has some notes from yesterday's mini-camp.

The rules for the Open Thread are the same as always, folks. No politics, no religion, no bad language, and no feeding of the trolls.

I'm going to break theme for today with the music and just put this one out there for little Ellie, her family, and all of the good people at the U of M Amplatz Children's Hospital for helping her to get her on the proper road to recovery. Yeah, it's not the kind of song we generally do here, but given the circumstances, it's appropriate.

The Open Thread is all yours, ladies and gentlemen. We'll effort to have more for you over the course of the day today.