The meaning of these wins may ebb and flow from year to year, but there is always some meaning to be found. Most develop due to proximity, some due to consistent matchups in big games and others due to downright dislike. The best have all three of these elements blended together, and that's the kind that we're talking about when we talk about the Sioux and the Gophers.
Sure it isn't a famed matchup like the ones mentioned in the opening (we are talking college hockey after all), but for my money there's none better. What's lacking in numbers is made up for in passion, as there is no team hated more in the state of Minnesota, save the Green Bay Packers, than the University of North Dakota hockey team. There's nothing funnier than getting into an in-depth conversation about college hockey with a Gold Gopher fan, then dropping it on them that I root for the Sioux. The face that follows is typically somewhere between smelling a fart and having one of their testicles twisted with a pliers. Just a minute ago they were so happy to have found a likeminded follower of their favorite niche sport, and now this bit of unpleasantness. Sometimes I wish I had a picture.
Oil and Water
Having lived the last decade in Grand Forks and Minneapolis, the twin ground zeros of this disagreement, has given me a unique perspective. I'd like to think I'm able to look past the biases of both sides and evaluate things objectively. Of course being a Sioux fan, my green glasses are always on, but at least the tint is a lighter shade that many. All that being said, allow me to approximate what these opposing fanbases see when they look at each other:
Sioux fans - Loud, obnoxious, mullet-wearing, drunken, trailer park denizens. Likely clothed in a leather jacket bearing the logo of a snowmobile or farm equipment manufacturer and blue jeans caked with dirt and/or some kind of animal feces. The only thing more offensive than their smell is the verbal diarrhea spewing from their fetal alcohol-addled heads when engaging in a profanity-laced diatribe. Which they do on a pretty much constant basis.
To date, none of their players has ever committed a penalty, with anything short of removing a skate to administer a 'Colombian necktie' shrugged off as "good hard-nosed hockey". The dirty hack players are constantly egged on by a fanbase that would be more at home watching Roman gladiators, since most of the time they seem to be of the opinion the game shouldn't end until somebody is dead. It should also be noted that most of these goons in green are 27-year old Canuck neanderthals hailing from places like 'Moosenut' and 'Beaverlip River'. By a convenient coincidence, covering their tracks after escaping the Canadian penitentiary system necessitated the same type of forged documents required to play NCAA hockey. So here they are, ready to commit assault and battery on some unsuspecting kid a the better part of a decade younger.
God forbid a call actually is made against a Sioux player, as it's sure to start their fans howling about a conspiracy in favor of the opposition. The gigantic chip on their shoulder from a life spent in a second-rate state creates a relentless paranoia that is all-consuming. Look no further than their infatuation with the Gopher hockey program, on any given night, they care more about the Gophers losing that their own team winning. But I suppose that's what happens when you live in a god-forsaken wasteland and hockey is the only form of entertainment.
Should you encounter one of these mouthbreathers, the best you can hope for is to point out a tree as you're walking into the arena, and pray they will remain outside marveling at it until long after the game is finished. Or perhaps roll a can of Natural Light into traffic.
Gopher fans - Elitist, sweater-around-the-neck, whining dandies who constantly cry like a 4-year old girl with a skinned knee. Before they invented women's hockey, it was simply called Gopher hockey...and they still haven't adjusted very well to this checking thing. Pride On Ice is the disgustingly self-congratulating slogan they've tagged to this team, but someone should tell these people that pride comes before the fall. And when they face the Sioux, the falling comes early and often.
If the smugness and arrogance of this fanbase were a tangible structure, it would be visible from space like the Great Wall of China. The average Gopher hockey fan thinks that game was invented by John Mariucci in 1934 when God reached down from heaven and handed him the golden stick. The idea that Canada had anything to do with it is really just a myth. Which is why the only "real" hockey players come from inside the border of Minnesota, and all Canadian players are disdained for trying to steal some of the credit from St. John. Opposing fans who aren't willing to grovel in inferiority and thank them for the gift they've bestowed need not apply. Somehow they seem to be laboring under the misconception that there's a column in the standings marked "Wins with a roster entirely from one state". Oddly enough, no one else can seem to locate it. Probably because it's not f**king there.
Despite this claim as hockey's originators, they're also the only school that's succeeded in turning a college hockey venue into a soul-dead corporate atmosphere. They'll try to make lame excuses about more entertainment options and better things to do, but you'd think in a city of millions, it shouldn't be all that hard to scrape together a lousy 10,000 folks to fill up a hockey arena. Instead, by the time they've valet-parked their Priuses outside the arena and made the long walk in halfway through the first period, they're really too tuckered for pesky things like standing up and cheering. That is if they bothered to show up at all, and if the cord on their oxygen tank will allow enough slack to stand in the first place.
The only that really does get these people fired up is when somebody lays a finger on one of their Golden Cupcakes. Can't have the young lads facing any contact, lest one of them might be too distraught to shamelessly showboat and jersey pop after scoring the goal that pulls the team within three or four of the opposition. By then again, I suppose you have to handle players like theirs with kid gloves, because one rough game for one of these prima donnas and the kid will probably be wearing an Islanders sweater next week.
That's the basic amalgamation of many comments I've heard over the years. Very little of it is true in general, a whole lot of it is true in the case of a few specific individuals. Like any teams out there, you will encounter good fans and idiots on either side. I've been fortunate enough to know many quality fans of both teams...who occasionally happen to act like idiots. But this happens very rarely. I can neither confirm nor deny that I've had any idiotic episodes myself :)
But some of that is to be expected, because over the years there have been battles. The stakes have been high with emotions to match. As a Grade A sports hothead, I can say without a trace of irony, I'm not bringing nearly as much hate to the party as many others I've met. Because some of these fans do truly dislike each other, I'm talking deep-seated feelings of animosity. So let's try to take emotion out of it and look at things with an unbiased eye.
Just The Facts
- UND trails the all-time series 127-132-14 (.490) but is 69-54-8 (.561) all-time against the Gophers on home ice
- During the last 10 years (we'll call this the PV Era, since it's pretty much my period of involvement), the teams have met 37 times and the Sioux hold a 19-15-3 edge.
- In 24 meetings from the start of the '01-02 season through the end of the '06-07 campaign, the teams split 12-12, so the advantage to the Sioux is a recent development. More on that later.
- Since a 6-1 loss on January 13th, 2006 (also know as the night I was the closest I've ever been to punching a Gopher fan) North Dakota is 11-4-3 against Minnesota.
Down Memory Lane
When I began watching college hockey in the late 90s, the Gophers were going through some lean times. As the Sioux contended for titles, my concerns lay with Heatley's Badgers and the St. Cloud Husky teams of Hartigan-Arnason-DiCasmirro. Those were the competition at the top of the standings those days, what did I care about the middle-of-the-pack Gophers? I knew people hated them, but that was it; I usually saved my sports hate for the teams that beat mine, so I didn't spend much time worrying about Minnesota.
The night they came in and wrecked the opening of the Palace on the Prairie with a 7-5 come-from-behind win, that all changed. Looking back, that was really a turning point game for the two programs. The Sioux were coming off two stellar seasons, winning it all in 2000 and falling in the championship game in 2001. The Gophers had just passed the 20-year mark on their last title and were starting the 3rd season of the Don Lucia Era. You know the story from there, as the Gophers went on to win back-to-back titles, while the Sioux took the next couple of seasons to re-load. Clicking this link will make any Gopher fan draw wood.
Many a groan went up in Grand Forks when a hometown kid netted the game winner for the Maroon-N-Gold during OT of that game, even more when they won it again a year later. But following those two titles was what I like to think of as the Golden Age of this rivalry, and of course I mean that in the dynastic civilization sense, not in the sense of your uniform color. Truth be told, that's really more of a yellow anyway.
From 2004-2007, the Sioux and Gophers met in two Final Five Championship games, a Frozen Four semifinal and a West Regional final. The 2004 Final Five Championship, with the Sioux being led by Zach Parise and the Gophers by Thomas Vanek, and a host of other NHLers on the ice, is still the greatest hockey game I've ever seen (even though you sieved out horribly on that last goal Brandt, I'M STILL PISSED!!!). Kind of amazing to say that, considering it was a loss and it usually wrecks my day to watch my team lose in anything. Even the Gopher guys I know who usually gave me the most crap were buying me beers after that one, I think everybody was just happy to see it.
It helped a lot to get a measure of revenge the following year in the national semifinal, the first of several season-ending losses the Sioux have handed their biggest rival in the latter part of this decade. Nowhere near the meaning for me personally, and frankly nowhere near the game, considering it was being played in front of a half-full building in Columbus, instead of a standing-room crowd in St. Paul.
2006 didn't bring any high-stakes postseason matchups, but it did add plenty of fuel to the fire. For during an early December series, Danny Irmen unveiled, at least for the first time in my recollection, what will forever be etched into my as a Golden Gopher calling card: The Jersey Pop. I remember it vividly, because we had seats on the glass at the Ralph both nights. The first evening was a tightly contested 4-3 Gopher victory, and as we moved on to night number two, the fans amped up their intensity, as well as their harassment of Fargo native Irmen. But it the end, it was him who got the last laugh, popping in a goal late in the second period to put his team up three and skating the length of the ice past the student section, continuously waving the 'M' on the front of his jersey. Had I not been filled with rage due to the pending extension of my personal REA losing streak and squandering of great seats, I could have appreciated the comedy of a great 'Eff you' moment between a player and taunting fans. As it was, I just found myself wishing there was a sniper in the rafters who could take out the showboating SOB. I'm not proud of that, but there it is.
There was no showboating happening following the Gophers next game at the Ralph, which can be described in two words, and is guaranteed to bring a smile to the face of any NoDak fan: Holy Cross. I've heard a lot of people over the years say that Sioux fans made too much of this upset, and that's probably true. (After all, buying jerseys of some team just because they beat your rivals? Couldn't you just wear a Sioux jersey? I mean it's not like Holy Cross was the only ones who could get the job done here, let the St. Cloud fans go for that crap.) But when you consider the stakes, the setting, and what I just described in the preceding paragraph, taking place 4 months earlier, there was a lot of built up animosity there. I mean if the shoe was on the other foot, I'm pretty sure it would've some up more than once. But in the name of domestic harmony, I observe the statute of limitations on that one, you just can't leave out that part if you're recounting the recent history of the rivalry.
Many less informed individuals labor under the misconception that the Holy Cross game was the beginning of the Gophers current rough patch, but that is not the case. The 2007 squad took home the MacNaughton Cup as regular season WCHA champs, with the Sioux riding a season-ending hot streak to finish in 3rd. A late January meeting between the two teams produced another on of the rivalry's classic moments, at least from the UND perspective, in the form of the Robbie Bina Goal. Funny how these things only take a few syllables to spur instant recognition. Man I miss Jeff Frazee, always loved watching that guy play, too bad I was home on the couch with the flu for that game. Had a ticket and everything, still bugs me.
One interesting side note that many people don't know is that Sioux-Gopher games produced three ESPN Top 10 highlights during one calendar year. To put this in perspective, realize that ESPN averages one college hockey highlight a year, period, and it's always the game-winning goal of the national championship game. The first was the Bina Goal, January 2007, the second was two months later, and is still probably the biggest "you've-gotta-be-kidding-me!" moment I've ever had at a sporting event. Of course I'm talking about the Blake Wheeler Goal. Still bother me watching that.
Of course I was in the building for that one, chances are if something inexplicably bad is happening to one of my teams, I'm on the premises. Funny thing though, I never saw it go in. I was in a packed suite directly behind the Sioux goal, and when the puck came into the zone at a million miles an hour of a Gopher stick and was clearly (or so I thought) out of Wheeler's reach, I turned around and began to walk back to grab a beer.
And then the place exploded. (Facepalm)
But thankfully that was not a season-ending loss, so the next week my team moved onto the West Regional, which as luck would have it, featured the Gophers on the other side of the draw. Both teams attempted to blow their semifinal games, but ultimately prevailed, setting up a rematch of the prior weekend's thriller, albeit once again in far less thrilling conditions. I cannot tell you how sweet redemption was on this day, I must let it speak for itself. Just know that I'm not a spry man, but I must've jumped three feet in the air when this happened. That was season-ending loss #2 in the past three season dealt to the Gophers by the Sioux, and it also marked the high-water mark for Gopher hockey in the second half of this decade.
Over the last three seasons, things just haven't been quite the same in Dinkytown. The Sioux have continued to deliver highlights, including the last of the three Top 10s I brought up earlier, but for whatever reason (and there are no shortage of opinions), Gopher hockey has fallen on hard times.
Now I'm not going to sit here and say it wrecks my day to see the Gophers struggle, because that wouldn't be true. But I will say what started out as fun, watching a rival flounder, has given way a bit to missing the intensity and atmosphere of the best hockey games I've ever seen. Plenty of Sioux fans would be fine if they never saw Minnesota contend for another league title or national championship, but after witnessing some of the things I've recounted here in person, I have to say there's a large part of me that wants the old Gophers back. And no, I'm not talking about the title-winning Gophers, I'm talking about the "lose to the Sioux 4-3 in OT on the big stage" Gophers. It's so much more fun beating your team when they're good :)
But as the saying goes, be careful what you wish for, and perhaps I'll be eating these words at some point. Looking ahead to this weekend, I can't help but be filled with a twinge of concern; mostly because I'm a rampant pessimist, but also because I've seen so many odd things happen in this series when the roles were reversed. The Sioux should roll, they are playing great and have the type of physical team that has given the Gophers fits. But many times in the past few years, struggling North Dakota teams have come into this matchup looking overmatched, only to walk away with 3 or 4 points. I'd like history to repeat itself in the sense of the Sioux rolling over the Gophers at the Ralph, not in the underdog pulling off a stunning weekend upset. But that's why they play the games, we'll know all we need to by around 9:30 PM on Saturday. For my part, I think the Gophers have done their best worked against the league's best teams, and the Sioux have tended to blitz opponents in game one, then throttle back a bit on Saturdays. So I'll call a split: 5-2 Sioux Friday and 3-2 Gophers Saturday on the strength of a dynamite game from Patterson.
So there that is, 3,200 words of drivel that probably isn't news to most of you, but being that I'm a huge sports fan, and this is one of my all-time favorite things in the world of sports, I just kind of wanted to get it down on paper. To every Gopher fan out there, here's hoping it's you, me and 19,000 other maniacs at the X on the 3rd Saturday in March.
It'd be like old times.
Pat - this article just made my day and as you know, I live and die Gopher hockey just as you live and die for the Sioux! My allegiance to the team is derived from my roots as a Minnesota high school hockey player and was reinforced the my attendance at the University itself. However, some may not realize that their is quite a personal conflict with my hatred for the Sioux, which leads me for maybe only a few seconds a year, to truly respect the organization. This premise of this conflict, is the fact that my uncle played for the Sioux for 4 years and won two national championships, to which I'm obviously proud.
ReplyDeleteAs for your highlights, I'm glad you posted the clip to the Wheeler goal as that was single-handedly the best ending to any Gopher-Sioux game I've ever attended. Although you eluded to it through your 2007 Top 10 highlight real, this clip might have been my ultimate low for a Gopher-Sioux game (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4kxS1ksqtw&NR=1&feature=fvwp).
Being a native Nodakian and avid Sioux hockey fan I could not be happier with this post. Watching and reading about the old games and goals was awesome! Now to prove stereotypes are around for a reason- HOLY CROSS, HOLY CROSS, HOLY CROSS!!!! Suck it rodent fans!!!
ReplyDeleteSorry Patty, couldn't help myself.