Everybody Hates The Gophers

From: USA Hockey (complete article)
By Jess Myers, Inside College Hockey

When you head west across Minnesota, there’s a chance you’re driving into the teeth of bad weather.

But there’s no meteorological explanation for a phenomenon the University of Minnesota men’s hockey team encounters every time the Golden Gophers hop on a bus for games. Anytime they head west to places like North Dakota and St. Cloud State, east to Wisconsin, south to Minnesota State Mankato, or north to Minnesota Duluth, the Gophers know they’re heading into the eye of a storm.

“As much as you want to block it out of your mind, you can’t help but notice the atmosphere and the crowd. There’s a natural intensity there,” says Blake Wheeler, a junior forward at Minnesota and one of four players on the current roster who were selected in the first round of the NHL Entry Draft.

“It’s something you deal with every time you go on the road. Everyone wants to beat the Gophers. You just have to try to block it out and play hockey.”

Overly hostile audiences on hand everywhere they travel is just one fact of the strange and wonderful life student athletes encounter if they choose to don a maroon and gold sweater with a big ‘M’ on the front.

While some schools have hockey teams that can toil in relative anonymity, either overshadowed by bigger sports on campus or lost in a giant media market, things are different in Minneapolis. Unlike most other college hockey programs, nearly every Gopher game is televised throughout the region.

And while Gopher hockey is not, and will never be, the biggest sport in a media market that includes the NFL, NHL, NBA and MLB, as well as Big Ten football and basketball, statewide and region-wide there’s a love-hate dynamic that follows the Gophers at home and away.

Similar to baseball’s New York Yankees, the Gophers are worshipped by an army of fans, and despised by nearly everyone else.

Before taking over the reins of his home state’s biggest college hockey program in 1999, Don Lucia worked wonders in six seasons at Colorado College. The Tigers had been something akin to doormats in the WCHA for nearly 40 years, before Lucia came to Colorado Springs in 1993 and lifted the team from the league cellar to the league title in his first season. Before he left CC, Lucia’s teams won two more WCHA titles (becoming the first school in league history to win three straight), played in the Frozen Four twice, and came within an overtime goal of winning the NCAA title in 1996.

But if the coach thought he’d seen it all, he was wrong. For starters, he’d never been behind the visitors’ bench on a road trip with the Gophers.

“When I was at CC versus when I’ve been at Minnesota, when you go into a building, the difference is night and day,” Lucia says. “I always get asked who’s our biggest rival. You know darn well that for St. Cloud, Duluth, Mankato, North Dakota and Wisconsin, we’re their biggest rival. CC and Denver have each other, but I can guarantee we’re second.”

Lucia had it good in Colorado. He was at an attractive school in a big market. He had just moved into a new state-of-the-art arena. He had led the Tigers’ program from the brink of extinction to a place among the national powers. He left the shadow of the mountains to come to a Minnesota program that many felt needed an infusion of new blood to help it return to college hockey prominence.

Lucia’s hiring came almost 20 years to the day after the Gophers, under legendary coach Herb Brooks, had won the 1979 NCAA title – their most recent at the time. And in 1998 the Gophers had finished in the lower half of the 10-team WCHA for the first time in more than two decades.

As he begins his eighth season running the Minnesota program, Lucia can look back on two NCAA titles, two WCHA regular season crown, two WCHA playoff titles and one Hobey Baker winner. That run of success has been spurred in part by Lucia’s coaching and in part by the school’s amazing ability to consistently attract the top talent from the hockey-rich region.

“We’re in a great position,” Lucia admits. “It’s kind of like being in Indiana for basketball or Texas for football. You’re still a product of your recruiting area, and in the state of Minnesota we’re producing more players than we ever have before.”