The #1 Denver Pioneers play host to the #20 Wisconsin Badgers this weekend, rekindling an old WCHA rivalry for the first time since Boone swept Bucky in Madison in January 2019.
Here are the Top 10 indications you can tell Wisconsin hockey fans are in Denver:
- They add cheese curds to Rocky Mountain oysters
- A double-wide is their date, not a mobile home
- Their iPhones have block heaters
- If a Wisconsin woman tells you she is into ‘husbandry’, it doesn’t mean she wants to fetch a beer.
- If they look glum on Friday it’s because they’re missing their neighborhood fish fry.
- Standing room only at Culver’s and the drive-thru line is stretched around the block
- Badger hockey stopped goal celebrations after dental injuries by plexiglass doing the Lambeau Leap.
- They’ll mistake local birds for indigenous Wisconsin mosquitos.
Typical sign found near Wisconsin grade schools. - Lone Tree Cabela’s places local fire marshall on speed dial
- Badger fans can explain the difference between icing and offsides and differentiate between an Ayrshire, a Brown Swiss, a Guernsey, and a Milking Shorthorn.
11. Local bars will run out of Lienie’s and PBR.
12. They’ll dump their salad into a Bloody Mary and call it a meal.
13. The butt of every joke will be Sven or Ole.
14. They’ll be towing their ice fishing shanties…
15. …behind their Harleys.
16. String Cheese
17. Badgers are weasels, so are Wolverines. Gophers are rodents. Nuff said.
18. Brats are a food group.
19. They’ll only pee in Kohler fixtures.
20. Unlike us, they kept their lovable, inoffensive, cartoon-like mascot…
Years ago they were always up there in the top tier of college hockey teams. For the last 20 plus, not so. What happened?
Some years ago I was told by a Wisc insider that they had made a conscious decision to recruit players they thought would stay to graduation, thus shunning the one-and-done pro aspirants. Of course with the current NIL/portal changes this approach is no longer feasible…