Photo: Colorado College hockey players revel in last season’s ‘championship moment’
“We’ve added the 2018-2019 Gold Pan banner to our 43 other participation banners,” said hockey head coach Mike Haviland in a Colorado College press release earlier this year. The announcement outlined a year-long celebration commemorating last season’s series win against Denver.
“Each of our student-athletes possessed the Gold Pan trophy for one day over the summer,” said CC in their press release. “And, we are planning to schedule a ‘reenactment’ of the final seconds of the clinching game last season for students and fans who missed the big moment.”
Looking back at the series win, current team captain Alex Berardinelli said, “Yea. I love the part where we posed together on the ice. It’s almost like we won a championship or something.”
Forward Grant Cruikshank who scored the winning goal in the deciding 1-0 victory is having his #21 retired. The entire 2018-2019 team will be enshrined into the CC Sports Hall of Fame and players’ uniforms have been adorned with Gold Pan patches and bold script for the weekend.
“No decision has been made on Gold Pan rings. We have a preliminary design from Jostens but we have not given them the go-ahead…yet,” said Haviland.
We Pio fans often snicker at CC’s silly banner obsessions and the many full lifetimes of NCAA disappointment that the Tigers have given their fans since 1957, but I do admire the way CC focused last year to win back the Gold Pan from a more talented Pioneer squad.
This CC team will be a difficult assigment, and recent weeks have humbled the Pioneers since the 8-0 start.
With the DU students out on break, the Pioneers will need to be self motivated to earning the Gold Pan back, and my hope is we’ll see a better overall DU performance this weekend than we saw in Arizona.
As a Tigers fan, this satire is funny because, sadly, it’s true. I’ve publicly asked that at the new Robson Arena they refrain from hanging participation banners. Let’s stick with only league and national championship banners, even if that means only being able to hang a couple banners. All those extra banners have accomplished is providing fodder for opposing fan bases.
Regarding this weekend, CC has demonstrated to play suffocating, aggressive lights out hockey and they’ve also demonstrated the ability to lay eggs as well, looking disinterested and unmotivated on nights immediately following big wins (see losses to Minnesota and Michigan State for examples). Depending on which CC team shows up both nights this weekend will determine in large part their success.
The same can be said for DU. Not sure recently which team will show up for DU either. This series is looking like a home split…If so, CC keeps the Gold Pan.
I echo Dan’s comments. I have mentioned the excessive banners as well and am hoping not to have that at Robson. It will be more fun to bag on SCSU for their participation banners if CC stops doing it!
As for the series, I thought DU looked nearly invincible for the first month of the season, but they’ve clearly come back to earth. CC is a roller coaster. I go from being excited about them one game to discouraged the next. We’ll see which team comes out of it this weekend.
This should be a great series. Both teams appear to have some question marks (DU certainly does), it’s a rivalry weekend, last series before the break, and the Gold Pan looms. Can’t wait.