The Wake

Thursday February 10, 2005 marks a sad day for many University of Minnesota Gopher hockey fans. It wasn’t the fact that our beloved men’s hockey team was in the middle of a slump. Oh no, it takes a lot more than that to get us down. It was worse … PrideOnIce.com, the premier men’s Gopher hockey Web site was down – out with a career-ending injury.

As a freshman I originally went to PrideOnIce so that I could learn the cheers that everyone did at the games. It was only after I ventured into the message board that I realized POI was the real deal.

The message board was an online gathering place for hundreds of hardcore Gopher hockey fans. People were discussing everything from where to tailgate to potential new recruits.

Every week “WPoS” (a message board member) would post a thread to talk about the upcoming weekend series. You were bound to get some great opinions on the team from all the rubes. A rube, for all of you that don’t know, is a person that intensely follows a sports team and keeps up on everything by reading every article on the team and listening to AM radio all day. I didn’t know what a rube was at first, but all I had to do was ask, and sure enough, “hoop” posted the definition to help me out.

For games that weren’t televised or weren’t even available on the radio in your area, all you had to do was check POI throughout the night and you would get all kinds of updates.

If it was an away series, you could get an opinion of how they played in person from “Cardinal” and other members of the POI road crew.

If you went on over to the “Marketplace” section, aside from people buying and selling tickets, you could sometimes find “Thomps” putting together an order for his custom-made throwback jerseys.

My defining POI moment came in January of this year. I had not been able to make it to the Dodge Holiday Classic tournament, which is where they handed out the 2004-2005 long men’s hockey poster. This is the best giveaway of the year and I desperately needed to get one, so I signed on to POI and asked if anyone had an extra. “Meghan” came to my rescue. She had an extra one and was going to give it to me during a game. That game rolled around and she came through with the poster. I offered to buy her a drink … anything to repay the kindness. All she said was, “it’s from one Gopher fan to another.”

When I remember PrideOnIce, I’ll remember being able to be a part of a community with some of the greatest fans in the world. As for now, you’ll be able to find me and all the rubes over at “Jupiter’s” site, GopherPuckLive.com. GPL is doing an amazing job of picking up where POI left off, but it will never be able to replace its predecessor.

PrideOnIce was a true testament to the honor and respect that Gopher Hockey stands for, and there will always be a spot for it in the hearts of Gopher hockey fans.

Jim Swakow is a voracious Gopher hockey fan and hates the “fucking badgers more than anything in the world.” He welcomes comments at office@wakenews.org.