Green Bay, Wis. – Steve Gay’s 1966 Dodge recreational vehicle, which comes from an era in which an RV more resembled a bus than a comfortable home on wheels, is painted yellow with the Green Bay Packers’ logo on the side. The odometer is jammed at 19,999, as if it balked at turning to 20,000 – a long, long, long time and many trips ago. Inside, it is a Packers museum, decorated in green and yellow and with artifacts that could have come out of Curly Lambeau’s garage.
Gay, 41, works for UPS in Green Bay, and has been both a Packers and Wisconsin Badgers partisan his entire life. His RV, which he purchased and remodeled in the early 1990s, has been to two Super Bowls, growling and fighting through drives to New Orleans and San Diego.
On Saturday, wearing shorts, as he always does, he parked the RV just inside the Lambeau parking lot entrance and played host to a contingent of Badgermaniacs, a different group of friends than those who find him at Packers games. But the menu of the Badgers fans was familiar, an amalgam of the tailgates near Madison’s Camp Randall Stadium for Wisconsin football games and before the Packers’ games. Brat- wurst, chicken broth, gyros and cherries marinated in something that meant anyone eating more than two needed the services of a designated driver.
Welcome to college hockey, outdoor-style.
And the Wisconsin Badgers, who later beat Ohio State 4-2 before 40,890 fans at the Packers’ home stadium on a day when temperatures hovered in the high 20s, were invigorated – even before they went into the dressing room.
“Guys were nervous,” said Badgers winger Adam Burish, who scored only 23 seconds into the game. “As we drove in, we saw all the tailgating, and people yelling and screaming, and guys were saying, ‘Geez, we’re nervous already.”‘
The game Saturday wasn’t great on its own merits. But the show was.
The ice was passable, not terrific, but that was understandable under the outdoor circumstances. “You could put cement out there and it would be a thrill to play in Lambeau Field,” said Burish, a Madison native who played junior hockey for the Green Bay Gamblers and was a 2002 Chicago Blackhawks draft choice.
With the rink nudged against the north end zone, with the other end at about the far 35-yard line in front of temporary bleachers, the available seats pretty much were full. Yes, the rink at times seemed isolated in the middle of the field, but the atmosphere unquestionably was, well, Woodstock and Camp Randall football tossed together.
The fans even transferred the Camp Randall tradition of jumping around, registering approximately 1.3 on the (Pat) Richter Scale, to the song, “Jump Around,” by House of Pain. At the football games, the rite comes after the third quarter; at the hockey game, it came after the second period.
“When the coaching staff went out for the third period, they had the jump-around going on,” Badgers coach Mike Eaves said. “I felt like my body started moving, with all the energy that was out there.”
When the game ended, and the Western Collegiate Hockey Association Badgers had won the nonleague game against the Buckeyes, junior defenseman Jeff Likens announced to his teammates that it was time: The Badgers needed to go to the north end zone and do the Lambeau Leap. To put it nicely, the Packers wouldn’t be jealous of the Badgers’ vertical leap. But the Packers don’t have to do it wearing skates and Burish gently took exception to the suggestion that the Badgers still needed a little work on the maneuver.
“Oh, we were perfect,” Burish said. “You know how John Madden diagrams where your hips have got to be above the green? I thought we did a good job of that, and we were perfect.”
Badgers junior left wing Robbie Earl, a Toronto Maple Leafs draft choice in 2004, got his 15th goal of the season into an empty net to clinch the victory. He called the experience “surreal at times. Everything about it was first-class and amazing, and it’s something I’ll remember the rest of my life.”
The NHL, which gave the outdoors a shot in Edmonton in November 2003, should next move to putting a regular-season game in an NFL or major-league baseball stadium. Though the combination of the Wisconsin collegiate and pro football atmospheres would be impossible to duplicate, a good time could be had by all.
Hairy situation
Yes, finasteride (or Propecia) – prescribed to preserve hair – can be a masking agent for nandrolone, a steroid. Yes, Canadiens goalie Jose Theodore has a full head of hair. But the consensus is that Theodore’s flunking of a pre-Olympic drug screening isn’t a sign of anything other than that with an eye on keeping that full head of hair, he has been taking Propecia for eight years.
In Theodore’s case, the NHL isn’t getting involved because the pre-Olympic testing predated the recently implemented NHL testing. Significantly, Theodore wasn’t chosen for the Canadian Olympic team, anyway.
“I’ve been taking this for eight years and there was never a problem,” he told the Montreal Gazette. “When I learned that there might be a problem in October, I asked the league for an exclusion and it was granted.”
Addition by subtraction
Go figure. The Blues are playing better after unloading Mike Sillinger and Doug Weight in the beginning of what could have been a demoralizing fire sale. But coach Mike Kitchen said the improvement goes back further than that, starting after the 6-1 loss to the Avalanche on Jan. 9.
“I’d say probably our last 13-15 games – since the Colorado game – our game has been pretty good,” Kitchen told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “Everyone may be getting used to each other and the team game. There’s a lot more trust out on the ice … players know their responsibilities a little bit more. Your next question will probably be, ‘Well, how come now with Weight and Sillinger gone (it’s better)?’ I really think the veterans have done a tremendous job here … with the younger players, making them understand the system. And the younger players have just fit in.”
Prucha’s injury
Rangers rookie winger Petr Prucha’s knee sprain probably won’t keep him out for long after the Olympic break, but he was crushed about having to skip the trip to Turin and missing out on playing for the Czech Republic. He was red-eyed when leaving the Wachovia Center last weekend after suffering the injury against the Flyers. He goes into the break with 25 goals and nine assists.
Terry Frei can be reached at 303-820-1895 or tfrei@denverpost.com.
