A few Crease Creatures notwithstanding, the guess is that most fans who heard two new chants at the Kohl Center this past weekend were asking themselves the same thing I was: ""what?""
Against any team, the Badger hockey experience is bound to include raillery against UW's opponent. So, entering a series against St. Cloud State this past weekend, any regular could have considered it a sure bet that fans would invoke the ""high school goalie"" and ""Gopher rejects"" chants.
A chant of ""cite your sources"" certainly is not part of that routine.
That's what a few Crease Creatures started yelling at Huskies goalie Bobby Goepfert on Friday night, and eventually the entire student section caught on. It would hardly be bold to suggest that no more than 20 people understood the jeer at first.
It turns out that Goepfert, a senior, failed to write a paper properly in his early collegiate days. At least one Badger fan, meanwhile, did some serious homework on the senior, who is one of the better goalies in the nation.
In his sophomore year at Providence, two days after turning in a sizable paper for an English class, Goepfert got a call from his coach, who told him he was dismissed from the team for plagiarism. Apparently he had neglected to turn in a bibliography.
""My story really hasn't changed,"" Inside Hockey quoted Goepfert as saying around the beginning of his first season at St. Cloud State. ""If you take the sense of the word plagiarism and what it actually is, you know, I did it. But did I do it intentionally? No. I didn't go in there writing that paper saying, ‘I'm going to take that guy's work and pass it off as my own.'""
Fortunately for Goepfert, the consequences for his actions did not include an end to college hockey. Pursuant to NCAA rules, Providence's athletic department was able to have input in deciding where Goepfert could resume playing. They decided it could be anywhere but a Hockey East school, presumably because they did not want him to be manning an opposing net.
And for good reason. He's a candidate for the Hobey Baker Award—given to the country's top goaltender—and a possible All-American.
""Goepfert's best attributes are his athleticism,"" UW captain Andrew Joudrey said following last weekend's series. ""He can get from post to post quickly, get to rebounds.""
That's why he leads the Western Collegiate Hockey Association in save percentage (.929) and the reason his team is all but certain to head to the NCAA Tournament, which may or may not include the Badgers.
Another certainty: Crease Creatures will be hard-pressed to ever find themselves chanting to the tune of a nursery rhyme that a goalie is a ""plagiarist, plagiarist, plagiarist...Goalie is a plagiarist, he got kicked out of school.""
