Cool as Ice
Blugold, Memorial championships are signs we’re becoming a hockey town
I wish I were more of a hockey fan. Sure, I have had my favorite hockey teams going back to the 1980s, but I rarely find myself hanging on each game in a season. For that matter, I tend to tune in to hockey happenings a little ways into the playoffs. This is a shame, since, by numerous accounts, in-person hockey is a thrilling experience – far superior to on-TV hockey. Perhaps I need to become a Minnesota Wild season ticket holder and swing over to St. Paul every few evenings; then I could properly appreciate not only the sport on a more-frequent basis, but relate to the Wild fans’ near-delirium from the team’s boffo free agent signings from the summer of 2012 – signings that would finally bring sustained success to the State of Hockey’s pro team.
Success in hockey has definitely come: not only to the Wild, but seemingly everywhere that one looks around the hockey landscape of our region. If Minnesota is the State of Hockey, I dare suggest Eau Claire is the City of Hockey, at least for Wisconsin. In March, Eau Claire produced a state boys’ hockey champion (Memorial High School), an NCAA Division III national champion (UW-Eau Claire) and the latest Wild call-up from the minors to the NHL (city native Jake Dowell). Even our sidewalks have helped to add to the hockey ambience by remaining coated by an inch of ice since late January. Ice skates have been one of the few reliable forms of transportation when walking your dog in Eau Claire during the latter half of this winter.
While the ice melts in the much-delayed spring thaw, the hockey talent and chemistry remains solid in the area. Memorial actually surprised observers in the WIAA tournament, having started the season with a losing record, then failing to win the Big Rivers Conference crown. Yet the Old Abes turned on the jets when needed, blowing away Verona 6-1 to bring home their second trophy in six years. All we need is for North to find their form from a few years ago and our city could try to own this state come tourney time.
The Blugolds’ national championship may have caught some off-guard as well. Unfortunately, Blugold athletics does not have a strong cachet in Eau Claire’s culture relative to the program’s assorted successes over the years. Witness the somewhat muted reaction in the media when the Blugold men’s basketball team made the D-III national championship game in 2000.
To a certain extent, there was a similar response before the Blugold men’s hockey team’s road to the Frozen Four. This is a squad that beat their bugaboo – St. Norbert – before heading to Lake Placid, N.Y., site of the 1980 “Miracle On Ice” United States Olympic hockey gold medal run. With a victory over Oswego State, the Blugolds had their second hockey national championship secured (their first as NAIA champs in ’84).
By the time the Blugolds earned their ticket to New York, I sensed a growing interest in the team in the Chippewa Valley. Perhaps because not many of us had been paying close attention, the hearing of the words “Frozen Four” and “Eau Claire” in the same sentence got us juiced for something fresh. Though the term “National Champion Blugolds” is not exactly rare – it has applied to three other teams at the university since 2000 – it had not yet been applied to a sport so characteristic of the Upper Midwest. The games may be over, but our curiosity has now been piqued.
Hockey has its fan base in the Valley, yet while we seemed a level removed from the sheer passion displayed in Minnesota, we are clearly more engaged than the peopile in, say, Iowa. We have a plethora of hockey talent and knowledge in the region, and this year’s Memorial and UW-Eau Claire successes speak to a growing aptitude for the sport around here.
This is a good time to be a western Wisconsin hockey fan: the aforementioned milestones, a Badger men’s WCHA crown, the undefeated Gopher women’s season. Let us embrace the excitement of the puck sport – and buy our dogs mini-hockey sweaters for next winter’s walks on the sidewalk rinks of the Chippewa Valley.