The regional final was a tough game to be at for the end, losing to NoDak and all (I think I dislike them more than Wisconsin right now), but the rest of the season was well worth the disappointment of not going to St. Louis: the win streak at the beginning, the development and excitement of some of the most highly touted Freshman in the nation, to name a few. My #1 highlight has to be the Final Five, especially the Championship game with Wheeler's Broten-esque goal in OT to beat the Sioux, I have never yelled and clapped so long and loud in my life. Too bad it wasn't on the other end of the ice in front of where I was sitting; but oh well, I can't have everything.
Next year will be even better than the last. We will hang 2 new banners in the ceiling at the beginning of next season (more than enough to ask for). The Freshmen will be Sophomores, the Sophomores will be experienced upperclassmen, and the Juniors will be the Senior leaders that they were always intended to be. Reload with one of the best Freshman classes in the nation, and you've got yourself another great season of good ol' Gopher Hockey.
I will leave you with this great excerpt from one of my favorite blogs to read (http://tnabacg.blogspot.com/), which pretty much sums up why I love this program so much:
(From March 4, 2003)
North Dakota may be a successful hockey program. Duluth may have its rabid fans. Mankato may be very important to people who hail from that city. But Gopher hockey is so much more than that, has meant so much more than that to me. It’s watching the first two periods of the game on MSC, then straining to pick up the third period on your alarm-clock radio after your parents have sent you to bed. It’s attending games in the new Mariucci Arena while wishing that you could have attended a game in the old Mariucci Arena, wishing that you had memories of the old arena when it was still Williams Arena Ice Rink. It’s John Mariucci, and John Mayasich, and the photos of teams going back too many years for anyone to have seen them all. It’s Herb Brooks, prowling the bench, leading three teams to titles. It’s Doug Woog, leading the team first as a player and then as a coach, leading them to a period of sustained greatness the likes of which today’s program can maybe only dream about. It’s Randy Skarda, hitting the post in overtime, and just how the heck did that weak backhander beat Stauber? It’s Neal Broten and the Hobey, Robb Stauber and the Hobey, Brian Bonin, and yes, Jordan Leopold with the Hobey. It’s the murals, where Leopold skates next to Crowley and Stauber makes a save on Woog. It’s the fact that nobody’s going to be wearing number 8 in maroon and gold on the ice anytime soon. It’s Broten chipping one over Iwabucci, Potulny sliding one under Yeats, it’s all the trophies in the concourse, so many that nobody knows exactly what they’re all there for anymore. It’s five gold banners, hanging over the east goal, spanning sixty-three years of Gopher champions.
But maybe most importantly, it’s the five-year-olds I see at the rink on Saturday mornings, when no one’s in the building except me and them, and all they know me as is as the kid who’s driving the Zamboni. They play their games, have their practices, and I see them warming up, skating the length of the ice (taking far too long) and faking this way and sliding one in and, hey, just maybe, if they were a little bigger, they would have looked just like Tyler Hirsch beating Wade Dubielewicz. And then maybe they make their first visit to the rink later that night, getting their first close-up look at the arena. Wow, Dad, how many guys are on that wall? Why are they up there? Dad, who’s going to be up there next? Hey, Grandpa, how many of these guys did you see play? How many banners are there up in the rafters, anyway? There sure are a lot. Why do all those kids say the same things after the other guys get a penalty, why do they all point at the goalie and yell? What are they saying? What do you mean you can’t tell me? Hey, Dad, we scored! What did everyone just say after the band stopped playing?
And then maybe Dad leans over to his son, as my father did to me, and maybe he wants to tell him about all the goals he’s seen, all the great players he’s watched, all of the championships he’s watched when he saw his team play this game, and what a game it is. Maybe he wants to teach him the words to the Rouser and the Minnesota March, and tell him just exactly how his dad reacted when Grant Potulny picked up Jordan Leopold’s shot after it deflected off Johnny Pohl, how Grant picked it up and slipped it under Matt Yeats and the whole state of Minnesota went berserk. But he doesn’t have time for all that. He knows that his son will pick that up in time, that soon, for his son, the game and the team will be the son’s and not just the father’s. Instead, he just sums all of it up in one sentence, with one word.
Instead, he just leans over and teaches him how to spell M-I-N-N-E-S-O-T-A.
