It was four score and six years ago that the Minnesota Golden Gopher/Wisconsin Badger hockey rivalry began on an undoubtedly outdoor rink with strikingly few advertisements adorning it. One must wonder how many pairs of lips were left frosted onto the mouthpieces of the horn players for each team's band.
Four score and six years. That's 86 years ago for those of you who always wondered what sort of "game" Abe Lincoln may have been referring to during the Gettysburg Address in which he began with a mysterious reference to a team of his dad's that allegedly scored 4 times in a game a handful of years prior?
In any case, the two teams (The Gophers and Badgers hockey programs, not our 16th President's father Thomas' team) have played each other 249 times.
In 2006, College Hockey News rated the border rivalry the second best in all of collegiate hockey.
What does all this have to do with this Sunday's matchup of our Squirt Gophers against the Hastings Squirt Badgers, you might ask?
Four brief paragraphs on a blog. Don't look any deeper into it than that.
Last week's opponent, the Wolverines, have had the Gophers' number this season so far going 2-0-1 against our men in maroon, just as the Pioneers have had the Wolverines' number, having handed them their only two defeats of the year.
Unfortunately for the Gophers, the Wolverines can't face the Pioneers every week and they'll host a nonconference game Sunday against an unknown Rosemount team. And equally unfortunate for the Gophers fans keeping track so far this season, the Wolverines have been beating nonconference opponents like they caught them stealing their Rock Band guitar and drum sets out from under their Christmas trees on Christmas Eve while simultaneously devouring down the cookies and milk so carefully left for the obese and curiously dressed seasonal gift giver. And as any parent of a 10 or 11 year old knows, separating them from the life-giving glow of the mystical video game machines is akin to purging their lungs of the very air they breathe...
But I digress.
Our Gophers enter this weekend's game against the Badgers in 2nd place in the conference and eager to erase the memory of last week's Wolverine whalloping, in which they gave up a season-high 5 consecutive goals before closing to within a goal near the end of regulation. The Badgers enter the game on the heels of a 4-2 loss to the Pioneers. Ironically the Badgers have played their best hockey against the Wolverines and Pioneers, two very good hockey teams in their own right.
And so, following in the tiny clawed footsteps of last week's fur-flying foray against the Wolverines, in another battle of large clawed, digging animals, our little golden rodents will lace up their skates and tunnel forward to engage in a hockey battle, against a somewhat smaller but arguably equally ferocious forest denizen, the Badgers.
Badgers aren't actually rodents or else I may find comparisons of them to overgrown rats with bad attitudes. Alas, they're Mustelids like ferrets, and therefore more closely related to dogs.
The Badgers have scored more than 2 goals in only 2 games this season. Compare that with the Gophers who have scored 3 or more times in 10 of 11 games. But hockey games aren't played on paper. They're not decided by the statistics leading up to the game, or the hype created or the smack talk thrown back and forth.
They're played by teams. Teams of players. Players with pride and with dedication to their teams and with a comradery only earned through the sweat and aching muscles of 3rd period shifts, the deep thirst endured during long, hard, drill-filled practices, and through the frequent changing in and out of often foul-smelling equipment in crowded, dimly lit, always foul-smelling lockerrooms.
Let's review...
1) A score = 20 years, & (What Thomas Lincoln did 4 times??)
2) Stealing video games = bad
3) Badgers = More like dogs than rats (breath is the same)
4) Santa Claus = Shops for clothes at the 2nd hand store, needs to shop at 2nd Wind Exercise
5) Lockerrooms = Foul Smelling
6) Great Fun = Youth Hockey in Hastings!
GO GOPHERS!!!!
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