Brugge Blog

Bob Johnson would be happy. Yesterday afternoon the UW Badger women’s hockey team, coached by his son, Mark, won the national championship, beating Minnesota 3-0. Then, in the evening (and into the night) the men’s team beat Cornell 1-0 in triple overtime to make it to the Frozen Four for the first time since 1992 (in Wisconsin hockey time, that is “since forever.”)

The women’s team did it in pretty impressive fashion, beating the two-time defending champions, having two straight shutout games, and compiling a season record of 36-4-1. Although Minnesota not as formidable this year, having lost to Wisconsin five times during the season, they knows what it feels like to be in a championship, and that’s worth a lot. It obviously wasn’t enough yesterday, but now the UW women can claim that experience. And as exciting as the title is, there is a bit of bonus giddiness in the fact that the Most Outstanding Player of the tournament was the Wisconsin goalie, Jessie Vetter, who is a freshman.

Hopefully by the time she is a senior, or even a sophomore, they also won’t have to play a regional final in a community ice arena, like they did this year. Nothing against Capital Ice Arena, but a national college tournament should warrant better.

As for the men’s game, it ended up snagging a thread of my own memory of Badger hockey glory days. When I went to check the score online last night at 9:30, I couldn’t find any story on it on Yahoo, just a two-line box score that had “3OT” next to it. Wow. So I googled “Wisconsin Cornell overtime” to see if anyone had sent in their copy yet. What came back was not the game from 2006, but from 1973.

In March, 1973 my family was sitting in our living room in front of a 12-inch black and white TV, watching Wisconsin play Cornell in the national semi-final game. By the middle of the second period, it’s 4-0 Cornell, looking bad. I don’t remember if I then went out of the room to get something, or was just not looking, but when Norm Cherry made it 4-1 I missed it. Mad? Sure. Superstitious? Certainly. I was in our local youth hockey league by that time, and rituals were a part of kids’ superstitous game prep: same pre-game food, same spot in the box, same sequence of wrapping tape, etc. So, if Wisconsin finally scored when I stopped watching them, then… I should stop watching for the rest of the game. So I did. Since the key to the voodoo seemed to be sight, I felt I could still listen to the game, so I sat with my back to the TV while the rest of my family watched.

Sure enough, it worked. Dennis Olmstead slapped one in to make it 4-2 by the end of the period. In the third, Cornell got a quick goal to make it 5-2 (I must have turned around and peeked) but then Wisconsin got it back by the middle of the period, and it was 5-3. With three minutes left in the game, Jim Johnston made it 5-4, and then with under a minute to play, Bob Johnson pulled our goalie for a sixth player. The final seconds of regulation were captured by a photographer, and are part of the UW sports archives now, but I remember the sequence well:

0:07, Olmstead passes to Dean Talafous in front of the net
0:06, Talafous shoots
0:05, Talafous scores

The overtime seemed like a foregone conclusion, even though it took almost the whole period to resolve it. Talafous scored again and it was over.

Fortunately the Badgers weren’t as drained by that as we were, because they went on to beat Denver the next night for their first NCAA title. Dean Talafous was the MVP of the tournament and a star in my eyes by then. I wore his number, 17, throughout my hockey days, hoping that some magic might be carried along.

So now I have to consider whether to find some place to watch the Frozen Four in two weeks, and then what sitting position will work best for them. I’ve used this mojo sparingly through the years, most recently helping the Packers win Super Bowl XXXI, but it may be time to pull it out again.

I can’t say that I know a whole lot about this year’s Badger men’s team, but I know they play a great game, and that’s what my magic will be pulling for. Oh, and the coach, Mike Eaves? He played on Bob Johnson’s Badgers’ 1977 championship team. His number was 17.