0:08 This is the GPL Podcast from gopherpucklive.com. 0:24 Now, here's Joop and Vego. 0:38 Good evening, and welcome to The GPL Podcast, episode number 164. 0:46 Well, usually we're on our break at this time of year, but we decided to do a show anyway, because we lost one of the greats in Doug Wooga this past weekend, and who else to have on the podcast? 0:59 Then of course, Frank Mazzocco, who, Frank, you're just gonna be linked to the Wooger for the rest of your life. 1:06 And that's a good thing. 1:07 Yeah, that'd be okay. 1:10 Yeah, it would definitely be okay, because you guys broadcast together for quite a few years, not as long as maybe people remember. 1:20 But I want to say it was in the early 2000s, you guys started broadcasting it together after Tom Reed had moved on to the wild, and after a short stint with Reed Larson by your side, you brought the Wooger in, and then you guys kind of became quite the pair. 1:36 We were often confused as Siamese twins and joined at the hip. 1:43 V, did you figure out what the exact first year was of his full time? 1:47 I know you sent me that email earlier, but I didn't do the math. 1:51 You know, I was kind of going through, and I think it took him a year after the wild started. 1:58 So that would have been, oh, gosh, now you're putting me on the spot. 2:03 Well, I think it was 2001. 2:07 2002 is when he went full time. 2:09 Yeah, because the previous year, you had Reed Larson come on to take Tom Reed's spot. 2:15 And I think people kind of knew. 2:18 When did the wild start? 2:20 Wasn't that 2000? 2:21 2000 is when the wild started. 2:23 So yeah, it was that year. 2:26 And then I think towards the end of the season, you brought in Doug as a kind of a third man. 2:31 Yes. 2:32 And then he became full time the next season, which would have been 2001, 2002. 2:38 So I mean, that's my best. 2:41 That's what I remember. 2:42 So yeah, we did eight years together. 2:44 Yeah. 2:46 And you did about the same or close with Tom Reed, I want to say, didn't you? 2:50 You were a pair for quite a while. 2:55 Tom started, we started in 92 or 93. 3:00 And what did you say? 3:00 He left in 2000. 3:02 So that would have been about seven years. 3:03 Yeah, something like that. 3:05 Am I talking loud enough? 3:06 Boys, I feel like I'm mumbling here. 3:08 We hear you just fine. 3:12 So Frank, you figure your shelf life with someone is about seven or eight years. 3:16 Is that basically what you're telling us? 3:18 No, their shelf life with me. 3:23 I remember going up to Grand Forks. 3:27 God rest his soul. 3:29 Mr. 3:30 Marvin. 3:33 First name. 3:37 You know, from Marvin Windows. 3:38 Yeah. 3:39 The grandpa. 3:40 Father Marvin will go with that. 3:43 Grandfather Marvin. 3:44 He's doing the Blue Line lunch up there. 3:48 And Wooger is, I think it's like our first year, something like that together. 3:53 You know, and they just love to needle Gophers. 3:58 They do. 3:59 And so Mr. 4:02 Marvin. 4:02 God darn it. 4:03 I can't think of his first name. 4:04 I'm feeling like an idiot. 4:07 He says Wooger. 4:08 And then he rattles off all the guys that I had worked with through North Stars. 4:14 He says Tom Younghands, Freddie Barrett, Wally Shaver, Tom Reed, Reed Larson. 4:22 Wooger, be careful. 4:23 This Mazzocco guy is going to get you. 4:25 He'll run you out of town. 4:31 And you did. 4:32 Not really. 4:33 No, no. 4:34 We both got the same boot in the rear end the same time. 4:38 Just about. 4:39 I think Wooger was in the booth for at least one year maybe with... 4:46 They broomed us out. 4:47 Actually, you know, that picture of John Harris, does everybody know John Harris or just am I the only one who doesn't know him? 4:58 I'm not sure who John Harris is. 5:00 The golf guy? 5:02 No, probably a more famous John Harris. 5:05 Now, he's the one that wore that Woog shirt, you know, the quote that I put on Twitter. 5:12 His name is John Harris. 5:14 And now he's more famous. 5:17 So that was like, I mean, that was Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. 5:23 That was four days before we got the axe. 5:27 Really? 5:27 Oh, so that's when you saw that you saw that shirt about the wheelchairs quote. 5:32 Yes. 5:32 Oh, that's the one I'm referring to. 5:34 Yes. 5:34 Well, it's this one. 5:35 You played it on the show the other day with the Mazzocco or the Mazzocco, the Motsgo show. 5:42 Yes. 5:43 Everybody in the building standing, some people in the wheelchair. 5:46 Everybody's up. 5:49 You know, I just happened to capture that because that was back when I was doing the little highlight videos on the website. 5:57 So I was always capturing your guys, you know, recording the games. 6:02 And I believe you actually came and you sent me a message or you email me say, Hey, he said this, look for it. 6:08 And I went back and I found it. 6:10 And that's the thing I saved from it. 6:13 I mean, it's just classic. 6:14 Well, that's that one. 6:16 Yes. 6:16 But I still think the other one is the urinals one. 6:20 It's funnier. 6:21 But unfortunately, every time I tell it, I've got to explain to people. 6:27 Yes, Novosibirsk, or however you say it, is a real city. 6:31 And the urinals is a mountain range, folks, for those of you who didn't get through high school geography. 6:38 But I think that one is funnier because Doug was a geography major. 6:42 Are we talking cryptic here? 6:44 Speaking in tongues, do people know what we're talking about? 6:46 Oh, well, they definitely do. 6:48 Because the people listening now have been following the Wooger for a long time. 6:52 And I don't think you don't need to explain this one at all. 6:55 We all know this one. 6:56 And it's a lot better to fly from Vancouver than it is from Novosibirsk, I'll tell you. 7:04 Novosibirsk is just on the eastern part of the Urals, folks. 7:12 And I actually have a video of you recalling that story at Tom Reads for your, quote, retirement party back in that year. 7:23 And you were like, is Doug still here? 7:25 And then he said, no. 7:26 He's like, oh, good. 7:26 Well, I'm going to tell this story. 7:30 Did you hear me laughing? 7:32 Me laughing was unreal. 7:35 I have this rope that I had in the booth. 7:38 And when he would go, I would just give as much rope as he wanted. 7:42 That night I gave him 100 feet. 7:43 So Doug, do you want 100 feet or go? 7:45 Go wherever you want to go with this darn thing. 7:48 And we'll laugh with you. 7:49 Got it? 7:50 You know, it's just great to hear his voice too. 7:53 It is. 7:53 He just, you know, he's got that. 7:57 This humor is just built right into it. 8:00 Yes. 8:01 Yes. 8:02 V, I bet you've got to have a couple of stories about the Wooger, don't you? 8:07 Oh man, you know, growing up, my era, he was such a part of gopher hockey and just seeing him around the rinks and things like that, you know, you just wanted to engage with him and talk to him. 8:18 And he was always a guy who was up for a conversation. 8:21 And that's one of the things I remember about Wooger. 8:24 You know, you didn't have to be an insider to connect with them. 8:27 You could just be somebody at a hockey rink and he'd give you a story or two and maybe, you know, tell a tale or, you know, have a memory to share. 8:36 And I think that's one of the best parts about the Wooger is how engaging he was with everyone. 8:44 You could be a hobo in a railroad yard. 8:46 He'd strike up a conversation with you. 8:48 He was, he's a beauty. 8:51 You know, I tried to clean that up a little bit, but we were in the hotel lobby in Madison waiting for the shuttle to take us to the rink. 9:02 And he walks up to this guy and just says, Hi, you come here with your family often? 9:10 He doesn't know him from Adam. 9:17 You know, I was actually listening to Chad Hartman this afternoon on WCCL and he was talking about the Wooger and he was saying there was one time he did a show about a couple of years ago, two or three years ago, where Doug called in on the show but didn't say, he just wanted to talk about what they were talking about. 9:35 And it took him a little while. 9:36 They're like, they're just talking to, you know, somebody calling in, they had a question or whatever. 9:40 And it was the Wooger calling in talking about the subject they were talking about. 9:44 He couldn't remember the subject, but he's like, all of a sudden he realized he's talking to Doug Woog because Doug Woog was just fascinated by what they were talking about. 9:53 That, you know, that doesn't surprise me at all. 9:57 Doug, Doug was a deep person. 9:59 He had a lot of interests. 10:01 You guys could go on a few tangents on the air from time to time. 10:05 No, no, no, not you guys. 10:10 Well, there's that famous Doug, there's a famous Craig Floor story that I've, he's told many times. 10:17 Where's Craig Floor? 10:19 Well, come on, for your audience. 10:21 Well, the audience people typically know Craig Floor is, well, he runs Mariuccie. 10:27 Let's just say he runs the whole complex, Mariuccie and Ritter. 10:29 He is the manager. 10:30 He's just the man behind this, behind the curtain thing. 10:32 And he's been there for over 20 years. 10:36 He was observing you guys up in the TV booth one time and, and, and the Wooger was just, he was going off on one of his tangents, not paying attention, and then he witnessed you just clap your hands out in front, you know, just and point to the ice and say, hey, hey, Wooger, there's a game going on. 10:59 And he witnessed this and almost fell over. 11:03 Is that story true, Frank? 11:06 I don't remember it, but Craig has told it so many times that it has come true. 11:11 And I do not deny it, I would never deny that story, because I could easily see it happening. 11:21 You know, his tangents include, let's start naming the tangents. 11:25 We don't have a time constraint here, do we? 11:27 We don't have to go to commercial, we can do whatever we want here, Frank. 11:31 I remember Peleated Woodpeckers. 11:36 I remember the Rally Bat. 11:38 Do you have that audio? 11:40 I do not have that audio, but I distinctly remember it. 11:43 And I remember at first that the Wooger actually being concerned. 11:47 He had concerned his voice that there's a bat in his arena. 11:53 He was concerned at first, like, oh, that's not really there. 11:57 He made up a tune, the Rally Bat tune, and he just started singing it, and the camera guy followed the bat around, and then they brought it back the next night, you know, the replay and the whole thing. 12:08 So, so that's two, I'm trying to think what else he went off on that I can, the water heater in his cabin, I remember that one. 12:17 Oh, no. 12:20 And this is while the game is going on. 12:24 Oh, sure. 12:24 Yeah. 12:26 Yeah. 12:26 And, and, you know, I'm looking at some of the, you know, the woogisms that people have sent to me, and some of them are just, you know, they're just complete woog. 12:38 I mean, there's one where it's described, Frank and Doug were talking about construction being done at the Mariucci Arena to make it NHL size. 12:44 So funny thing that's been talked about for a long time, Frank, but that's all I know about construction. 12:50 I could barely lay tile in my bathroom. 12:52 Doug, shiny side up, Frank. 12:57 I mean, that's a conversation that happened during a game. 13:01 Shiny side up, Frank, Wooger's telling you how to do it. 13:05 Thank you, Doug. 13:09 Oh boy. 13:11 It's just, he had kind of gone away from public view the last couple of years. 13:20 We saw him when they dedicated the changeable quota to the Doug Wooger arena in South St. 13:25 Paul. 13:26 He was at the Motsco press conference back in the end of March of 2018. 13:33 And then within the last couple of months, you had gone to see him as well, didn't you, Frank? 13:38 Well, yeah, true. 13:40 But there is a group called the Gopher Hockey Hasbuns. 13:47 Oh, boy. 13:48 Which I've been made an honorary member of. 13:53 But it actually started with a bunch of the fathers from probably the mid-90s era, after their kids left the programs. 14:02 And they became the Hasbuns and probably have a lunch once a year, maybe in the summer or something. 14:09 So anyway, I mean, in the last few years, Doug's been a regular attendee there. 14:15 And he's always looked fit and trim and, you know, but every year, his speech was slowing down a little bit more and a little bit more. 14:23 So yeah, Michael Letty and Tom Reed and I saw him, I thought it was right before the season started. 14:28 So just recently this fall. 14:32 And he was very quiet at that time, you could, I knew his brain was working, I could still feel his thought process, you know, I mean, that's one thing about working with Doug. 14:45 I just knew where he was going, knew what he was thinking and he was thinking about a lot of different things, but it was really difficult to even hear him across the table that we were sitting at. 14:56 So it was starting to, you know, the reality was really starting to set in about that time. 15:06 Yeah, I think it's tough when you are going through something like this and, you know, you have the brain working and you have so much that you want to say, you have someone who's so verbal as the Wooger is, and it's just almost so much work to talk through it. 15:23 It's a tough end. 15:26 Yeah. 15:26 I like that. 15:29 So, he had in his room on a whiteboard, he had a number of the sports channels listed by name and number, so he would be able to dial them in and watch games and watch sports. 15:45 And as I was leaving, I went up to one of the aides there, I don't know if she was a nurse or whatever, a member of the staff, and I said, hey, you have to do me a favor. 15:54 You got to put one more station up there. 15:55 I said, you got to look up and find out when Nova is on PBS and put that on Doug's board. 16:03 Because I remember he and I would talk about, you know, did you watch this game? 16:07 Did you watch that game? 16:08 He says, you know, I really don't watch much TV. 16:11 I mostly watch Nova. 16:14 So I wanted her to have that on that board so that he could watch his science program once a week. 16:19 Yeah, I actually watch Nova as well. 16:24 Wow. 16:25 I love that show. 16:26 Oh, yeah. 16:26 That's so I don't see anything strange about that. 16:30 Well, if you want to know how the urinals were were formed, oh, boy, oh, how the urinals were formed. 16:45 Oh, boy. 16:49 But I think that's one of the things you get away from the Wooger is he was such a teacher and a seeker of knowledge as I've talked to a bunch of people this week. 16:58 I talked to Don Lucia this week and he mentioned how much Woog was very wary of his position in leaving as a coach and still being around the program and wanting to be in the locker room and wanting to teach. 17:15 And one of Don's points of emphasis was he wanted to make sure the Wooger felt comfortable being around. 17:21 And he jokes that after his first win he gets done doing radio and he comes to the locker room and there's Wooger with a pizza pizza, drawing something up on the board, trying to help the kids get better and just having a great time. 17:35 And Don's like, well, he's comfortable. 17:40 He liked having him around because he just saw that personality and he didn't want to distance that from the program. 17:49 I don't think the Wooger would have ever had a problem being comfortable. 17:54 He always seemed very comfortable. 17:55 And you know what? 17:57 He puts everyone else at ease, at least that's my answer. 18:00 Well, he does, but he's also a pretty fiery competitor at times, but I think he knew how to compartmentalize it. 18:07 I don't know if you heard Micheletti this week, he tells the story of being a senior when the Wooger had his first year behind the bench at Minnesota, and Mick wasn't very happy with his ice time and his situation. 18:22 He told me that, you know, the year before he had 26 goals by Christmas, well, when Wooger was behind the bench, he only had seven goals at Christmas. 18:30 And so they had a meeting over at Beerman and they had it out and it was bleep you this and bleep you that and you need to do this and you need to do that and you need to get off the ice, you need to let other people have their role. 18:43 And they had a, you know, a big blow up and they left Beerman and they had practiced that afternoon and the first thing Wooger did was had Pat come in for a hug and he was able to move on. 18:55 And I think they had 35 wins that year and he was somebody who could be really intense, but at the same time, he knew when to let it go and when to move forward. 19:07 He was intense, I mean, there's more than a few stories of him being pretty tough on players. 19:16 But now you listen to some stories going back and you hear how many more players also had this great respect for him as a teacher and the fact that he was human. 19:29 You know, he'll chew you out, but he was also not afraid to laugh at himself. 19:34 And then have a good time. 19:35 You know, Pat, I think even said on another interview, Veegs, is that, you know, obviously they had it out and stuff, but in the end, he says it really helped him become more of a complete player. 19:49 Yeah, it's the things that the Wooger wanted him to do. 19:53 They got together and, you know, Pat realized this, this is actually a plus. 19:57 I'm not just scoring all over the place. 19:59 I'm helping the team. 20:02 Well, Pat learned how to be a little more productive with less ice time. 20:06 You know, he was used to playing every situation 20 plus 25 minutes a night and under Wooger that second half of the year, he was playing more 15, 16 minutes a night, but he was just as productive. 20:18 You know, he had learned how to elevate his game, how to play within a system, how to really do a puck possession style that, that Wooger really implemented at Minnesota and that made him so successful. 20:30 You know, he was a tactician of activating the defenseman, not dumping the puck in for the most part, and for just getting that offensive game going that cycle. 20:42 And I think it helped Pat as he moved on to other coaches, because you can't play like that all the time. 20:48 Not when you're playing up against other organized players. 20:52 Well, it comes back to the teaching thing, Frank. 20:55 Oh, yeah, right back to teaching. 20:58 Which, I might expound on a little bit, but Vegoe, I want to go back to the coaching part of it. 21:06 Did you catch the Mazzocco show this week? 21:09 I sure did. 21:11 So you may be able to translate and convey this better than me, but didn't Bob Mazzocco say something about tapping into Doug when Bob was coaching in Austin, and among the things he tapped into Doug was that Doug had a great command of the neutral zone ahead of his time. 21:31 Did that ring a bell? 21:34 When Mazzocco took over the coaching job, he took a mid-season USHL team and just kind of fell into it. 21:40 And he had obviously played and been an assistant coach for a long time, but he had never been a head coach. 21:46 So he didn't really have a great grasp of how to get his concepts across to his players. 21:53 And so what he learned from Woog was a lot of how to teach the puck possession game in the neutral zone, how to get guys to understand spacing, the options that they would have on the regroup, and how to drill your players to do it. 22:09 And from all the people I've talked to, Woog was a great intuitive thinker about this. 22:14 But he also was a great person at being able to teach it to others and reach them so that they learned how to pick up the system. 22:23 And he did that a lot through creative drills. 22:26 And I know as Mazzocco was talking to Genzel about this one day, they remembered a drill that Genzel had done as a player. 22:34 And they're, oh yeah, that's the Wooger drill. 22:37 It's a neutral zone regroup. 22:39 That's a great drill. 22:40 We've got to bring that in and teach it to these guys and get them to understand how to flow back and regroup behind the puck and get in the offensive zone. 22:50 And as a coach, that's one of the biggest challenges. 22:53 A lot of people can say, oh, you're not doing this right. 22:56 You're not doing that right. 22:57 But how do you get your players to understand that and know the options? 23:01 Because hockey is such a dynamic game, you just have to be able to teach patterns. 23:05 And Wooger was so good at doing that. 23:10 I don't remember exactly when, and I wish I could. 23:12 I don't remember if it was during our TV days or even after we were both off the air and had a quiet conversation with Doug. 23:22 And I said, what do you miss most about coaching? 23:26 And he didn't break stride. 23:29 He barely took a breath and he said, teaching. 23:33 That's the biggest thing he missed about coaching was being able to teach the game to the players. 23:39 And I know when his, I don't think I ever saw Doug beam any more brightly than when his granddaughters started playing hockey and he was able to relate to them and give them some tips and teach them some things. 23:57 That's what he loved to do. 23:58 I mean, he was an educator, right? 24:00 He was a teacher at South St. 24:02 Paul? 24:03 You know, someone told me he was a geography major, but then I also read that his major was in education. 24:10 So I'm not sure which way, maybe he had a geography minor or something, but he was an educator. 24:16 That's how he came out of college. 24:18 Well, I heard a good story about when he was at South St. 24:20 Paul, you know, they needed someone to coach the soccer team. 24:24 And so Wooger is like, yeah, sure, I can coach soccer, I can figure this out. 24:30 And the Wooger was an all-state football player and actually had scholarship offers to play football or hockey at the U and he was a football guy. 24:39 But he was tasked with this challenge of figuring out how to coach a soccer team. 24:44 And in four years, he got them to the state tournament. 24:47 South St. 24:47 Paul. 24:48 That's a guy who gets it. 24:50 You know, you have this great vision as a running back, as a hockey player, but not all players who have that great vision can teach others how to have that vision. 25:00 And I think that's just a testament to his impact on the game as he was able to. 25:05 I bet you give him a basketball team, he'd be able to figure it out. 25:08 Probably basketball was his sport. 25:12 It was when he was a youth. 25:14 He played basketball more than anything else until an injury until until everybody else had a growth spurt and that's another thing as well. 25:26 But you know, you've got basketball in him, you've got football in him, you've got hockey. 25:31 Like you said, he even taught soccer. 25:33 It's that variety of teaching, teaching different kids different things, teaching in school. 25:40 It seems like a pretty good theme here to me, Frank. 25:43 Like you said, he loved to teach. 25:46 Johnny Sorensen, current Gopher, had actually lettered in four sports in St. 25:55 Louis Park, right? 25:56 I think that's where he's out of. 25:59 Baseball, football, hockey, ping pong, which he preferred ping pong, not table tennis. 26:09 I don't remember anybody since the Woog era that was a multi-sport athlete like that. 26:17 And because in Doug's day, I came up with abbreviations to put in my notes so that I could identify these sports rather quickly. 26:28 And almost everybody was at least a two-sport athlete. 26:34 He loved them. 26:35 He just thought that was invaluable. 26:37 Well, I think you had a guy like Joe Dzizek. 26:39 He was a Mr. 26:40 Football, Mr. 26:41 Hockey and a baseball player. 26:42 You know, you have these kids who come from small schools and they're able to still do that. 26:47 I look at Jake Ratzloff now coming out of Rosemount. 26:50 He's got a tough choice because he can play D1 football. 26:54 He can play D1 hockey. 26:55 I've heard some coaches say he's probably got a D1 bat and a D1 arm at third base too. 27:01 It's just great to see those kind of athletes come through the state. 27:08 So, Frank, you've had many road trips with the Wooger. 27:14 Tell us something that you haven't told the rest of the crowd this week. 27:18 Whoa. 27:20 Because you guys are on the road. 27:22 You're either traveling together or on the road or even here. 27:27 You spent a lot of time with the Wooger. 27:31 It was pretty tense. 27:32 He liked Houghton. 27:34 A lot of people do. 27:38 Really by the time I started traveling with Dougie, he needed to watch his alcohol intake. 27:47 There were some meds that would mess with the alcohol and vice versa. 27:53 We didn't go on. 27:54 There weren't a lot of binge crazy kind of stories. 28:01 He would go out with us in Oton, hit the bar scene. 28:05 I don't know. 28:06 It's not like we bar hop, but we did close a joint with regularity up there. 28:14 I was telling Vig earlier. 28:16 When you called me earlier today, I don't remember if we were on the record or not. 28:20 I guess this is still safe to tell. 28:22 Well, he's coaching and after a game, he says to me, okay, right. 28:30 This is the kind of relationship that we have and you almost don't have anymore with coaches or maybe you didn't even have them back then. 28:38 He's coaching. 28:38 It's after the game. 28:40 He says to me, hey, I know we're the guys that are having a party. 28:44 Come on, let's go. 28:45 Well, it was the middle of January. 28:47 It was so cold. 28:49 I think he did add to the story. 28:51 I know that there's going to be a couple of dads there as well. 28:54 We can hang out with them. 28:56 I just had to qualify this for everyone else. 28:58 They weren't just going to the kids' party. 28:59 There are going to be some dads there. 29:02 It's a responsible... 29:04 Well, whatever that meant, I'm not sure. 29:06 I have never been... 29:10 So this is... 29:12 I guess you would say it's on campus or it's just barely off campus. 29:17 I'm a little out of the... 29:18 It was an apartment just off campus, but it was right there. 29:22 It was walking distance. 29:24 I have never been so afraid to be in a building in my life like I was with that crowd. 29:30 I don't know how the living room floor didn't collapse. 29:34 There were so many people in there. 29:36 And Doug and we... 29:39 I think I had a beer and I said, I think I need to go. 29:44 I think I don't want to be around here much longer. 29:49 And being that it was the middle of January, and I think we must have walked over there or something. 29:54 And well, nature called and I, you know, when it's cold, you just can't quite wait. 29:59 So I thought I'd go to the restroom, which was up on the second floor. 30:05 Oh, if I thought the living room was packed, that stairwell was packed. 30:12 I did my business and I said, this is enough. 30:14 I said, I can see trouble. 30:16 I can get myself into a lot of trouble here. 30:18 I'm getting out the door. 30:20 And I left. 30:21 I don't know if Doug left with me or if he left one of the other dads or whatever. 30:24 But that was Doug. 30:26 Just, hey, come on, let's go. 30:28 The guys are having a good time. 30:29 Let's go. 30:29 Let's go have a good time. 30:34 Well, I had one small, well, actually my friend and I, Jen Superstar. 30:40 We were up in Grand Forks 2007. 30:43 And back then, everyone went to Sugar's after the games, which was attached to the holiday in there, I believe, up right off the interstate. 30:51 We're there and Jen and I were getting pictures with the Wooger. 30:54 That's one of the pictures I put on Facebook of me and the Wooger. 30:57 And she got a picture, so we had a camera. 31:00 And later on, the Wooger came up to her and he's like, can you get a picture with me and my buddies here? 31:06 Apparently, some old buddies of his, either from high school or something like that, were up there to see him. 31:11 And they were out with him. 31:13 And I'll just tell it how she told it to me, because I was there. 31:17 But I told her, hey, send me the story so I could read it. 31:19 She goes, a full story. 31:21 Started with him wanting a pic with all his high school buddies that were there. 31:24 And he knew I had a camera if I'd take one for them. 31:27 So as they're all lined up, we were joking about everyone's height. 31:31 I think Wooger was joking that he wasn't the shortest, because we all know that Wooger wasn't that tall. 31:37 So when I was done taking the pics, she says, well, one of his buddies was writing down his email address so Jen could send it to him. 31:44 I said, hey, you had like three inches on those guys. 31:48 And he did. 31:49 He's three inches taller. 31:51 And when his buddy was done writing the email, Woog said, she said, I have three inches on you guys, but she didn't say where. 32:02 And then Jen kind of realized what he said was pretty kind of, wow. 32:07 And then he leaned over and said, you lobbed me that one, I just had to hit it. 32:10 I'm like, oh my, I was there when it happened, I can confirm this. 32:18 You got three inches on these guys, she's referring to the height, and he's like, oh boy. 32:23 And I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. 32:27 But she did, she kind of lobbed it up there for the Wooger. 32:30 And you know what, the Wooger just, he finished it all for us. 32:38 And that was after a victory up in Grand Forks. 32:40 So that was a fun night. 32:43 And Wooger wasn't drinking that night, he was just out with it. 32:46 He just wanted to be part of the scene. 32:48 You know, you know, after a win, you know, the pizza tastes better. 32:51 The beer is colder. 32:52 You think you think you're funnier. 32:59 Yeah, that was around the time where you stopped going out in Grand Forks, Frank, because we know they just love you up there. 33:08 Ah, I love it up there too. 33:15 Oh, boy, we're not video. 33:16 This is audio only, isn't it? 33:18 I just had to make sure no video, no video. 33:22 Yeah, I've just I've just got to look over some of these, these woogisms on the page. 33:29 And apparently, you guys are talking about Kyle Oposso's impressive physique and the wooger says, I'd hate to get caught in a dark closet with him with no shirt on what I forgot about that one. 33:55 Or, I mean, but you know, I'm just as long as we're on Oposso, Dave Starman from CBS. 34:04 That is exactly he's like an oak tree with arms that is on the woogisms page. 34:10 That that I hope is preserved forever. 34:12 You've got some do's like an oak tree with arms or Kangas had an MD mask dysfunction. 34:19 He tried to dangle the big Johnson right there. 34:25 He gave him the old Christian bow tie. 34:30 Gee, flow must be back at the diner because this period didn't have any. 34:36 He milked flow way too long, oh man, did he use that line for so long. 34:43 Holy smokes. 34:46 He was quite proud of it too. 34:48 Vanik went down quicker than a pancake at a VFW breakfast. 34:55 I mean, he's talking about the flow of the game. 34:58 Good pace, a lot of north and south or it could be east and west. 35:01 I'm not sure, but either way, I mean, there's just those little things. 35:08 And then you've got all the little things that he would say, you know, like, Ginegar and the Rally Barrier, compost sticks, not, he hated those sticks. 35:22 I mean, we could go on and on and I mean, there's the story of, you know, somebody sent this to me. 35:28 I've got to read this one. 35:30 It says, Another great moment was back in 95 or 96. 35:33 I was waiting in the student line up at UND to get in the old Ralph with a buddy of mine who attended the school. 35:39 This is a great story. 35:41 We got out of line and went to the arena lobby to warm up as the Gophers bus pulled in. 35:47 As the players were going through the lobby, some Sioux fan was hiding a sign or was holding a sign that read, Gophers suck. 35:55 And spotting off to the players and coaches with the entire team behind him, Woog steps up to the con and tells the kid, I will give you 50 bucks for that sign. 36:04 The kid thinks about it for a minute and hands Woog the sign, Woog hands the kid some amount of money and starts walking away. 36:12 The kid then yells, hey, this isn't 50 bucks. 36:15 And the Woog yells back, you're a North Dakota fan. 36:18 I didn't think you could count to 50. 36:20 Obviously, they don't know how to spell Gophers correctly. 36:23 It's spelled with two Fs. 36:27 All the boys on the team started laughing as Woog walks away and the kid just stands there with a stupid look on his face and no sign, priceless. 36:37 I wonder how much he gave them. 36:38 I really do. 36:39 I mean, I know that's not the point of the story, but I wonder if the kid wound up with three $1 bills or if he actually got a five out of it. 36:47 It's unbelievable. 36:51 It's obviously a great loss for the state of hockey and just for down to earth people because there was nobody more down to earth than the Wooger was, or Frank. 37:03 No. 37:04 No. 37:05 I said it earlier, he enjoyed laughing at himself and now I remember the story that, why I really believe that. 37:14 It was also in Grand Forks and it was right after the Chris McAlpine baseball cap, which is just a classic story in itself. 37:24 Does it need to be retold? 37:27 We only put the $500 underneath the hat. 37:31 Yeah. 37:31 And then told Chris, I left you some book money in my office, look for a baseball cap under the desk. 37:41 I told the story the other night, we had our Gopher Sports Properties holiday party and Mark Coyle was there. 37:52 And I told the story, you know, they asked for some Woog stories. 37:56 So I trotted this one out. 37:58 And Mark Coyle was like, I don't hear a thing. 38:00 I don't want to hear a thing. 38:04 So it's right after okay, so Chris gets the 500 bucks because there was an honest misunderstanding about whether he was coming back and Doug gave away his scholarship money to somebody else. 38:16 And Chris said, No, no, I'm coming back for another year. 38:19 And Doug said, Well, I already gave your money away. 38:20 But all right, I'll help you out with some book money. 38:23 Look for a baseball cap under my desk. 38:25 Okay. 38:25 All right. 38:26 So we'll get suspended for it and you know, whatever other trouble he got into. 38:31 And our next trip is up to Grand Forks, and we're going to pre tape the coach's interview before the game. 38:36 We're standing on the bench and before before the roll and tape, Doug kind of gives me an elbow a little bit. 38:42 He says, turn around. 38:43 He says, Look at the sign that the kids got in that corner over there. 38:46 And here's kids holding up this big sign that says, Hey, hey, Wooger, I need 500 bucks to have a loan. 38:52 And Doug is Doug is just laughing at himself so much as you know what, that's a good sign. 38:58 That's a good clean poke, Adam. 39:00 And Doug's enjoying the hell out of it. 39:03 Oh, God. 39:06 Oh, boy. 39:11 I just keep reading through these boogisms. 39:15 That shot was wide and soft. 39:16 That was a Charmin soft shot. 39:20 Patoni's been banging guys all night. 39:24 Paul Martin had blocked a shot with his groin and then understandably limps off the ice rather slowly. 39:30 You, Frank, say Martin got hit in the lower abdomen. 39:36 Doug gleefully looks like Paulie took one in the toast there. 39:39 And I'm hoping more, you know, I'll hear more stories. 39:47 I can keep this up on the website because we got to keep this stuff documented, otherwise it's going to be it'll be gone and lost and we don't want to lose this stuff. 39:59 Hey, were you taping games when during the Mankato series in 08? 40:06 I want to say yes. 40:08 So are you saying that there may be complete copies of that? 40:15 I do not have anything anymore because that was on an old DVR forever ago, so they didn't actually go on tape. 40:23 I know I had a few audio clips from it that I saved over the years, but most of it I don't have anymore. 40:35 And you would know this one, Frank. 40:36 This is you, actually. 40:36 Thank you. 40:48 You hear Wooger at the end going, Woohoo! 40:53 So I've got bits and pieces, but I don't have any video left from that era. 40:57 Are they not around because Fox Sports went after you? 41:00 Is it part of your agreement? 41:05 Well, no, I actually, well, back then, there was no YouTube. 41:09 So I was saving all these videos on my website and putting little MPEGs up and things like that and then. 41:18 Good for you, by the way, may I say. 41:22 Well, we were doing that. 41:23 I was doing that because people wanted to see, if they missed the game, you couldn't see it again. 41:29 And so I would put, I would just put these videos out on the site to just show the goals and whatnot. 41:38 And it, people liked it. 41:40 You know, I had Thomas Vannick come up to me once and say, I enjoy the videos because I can send them to my dad and my dad can see me play. 41:51 And I'm like, well, that's cool. 41:53 And, but then old Danny Ehrman scored a penalty shot and a little too many people saw that video. 42:02 And then that's when the hammer came down. 42:05 And, you know, these days I think companies have just given up because you can go to YouTube and see all this stuff now, but, you know, I did find some old videos from like 2004 that I had saved, like the final five and whatnot. 42:23 I've got all those tiny little videos. 42:25 I think I even put them on Twitter about a month ago, a couple of them, and so Frank, I have some, but not a lot. 42:38 I wish I, you know, Fox got this stuff somewhere. 42:41 I wish there was complete of that series because it was so epic. 42:46 And it would just, I mean, I remember the play. 42:49 I don't remember what the show was like. 42:51 It would be fun to hear what Doug was doing. 42:53 I mean, it was just so good. 42:58 I would love to have that one back. 43:00 There was a time machine. 43:02 Which game was it that Paul was injured? 43:05 Was it game two or one? 43:06 It was that series, wasn't it? 43:10 Vegs, do you remember if it was that series, wasn't it? 43:12 The Paul was severely injured. 43:13 Yeah, I don't remember the details of it, though. 43:17 I think it was two. 43:20 It seems to me we had an update in the third game. 43:27 I've got Jim Roseville's pictures of it. 43:29 I don't want to try to do it while I'm on the air here. 43:34 I'll disconnect something. 43:37 But I think it was two because my brain is just telling me that Saturday night, they tended to... 43:47 Do we need to recap this for the casual listener? 43:52 No, not at all. 43:55 So, Tom Poole gets injured and basically went head first into the bench, the boards. 44:03 So, all I remember... 44:04 So, we're just getting bits and pieces of information during the rest of the game. 44:13 And all I know is that... 44:16 I don't think we ever showed the event a second time. 44:22 And the word we got from the truck was, don't say anything, but it's really bad, and we're not going to show it. 44:29 So, boom, we didn't. 44:30 And I thought, good, someone's got some class around here. 44:32 That was cool. 44:34 And then it seemed to me by the end of the night, even before we got off the air, we couldn't use it on the air because nothing's confirmed or anything. 44:43 But that he had already been airlifted then to Rochester. 44:48 So, I'm pretty sure it was the second because on the Sunday night, we did some updates about him being in stable condition and all. 44:55 And then I'll tell you what the other thing I wish I had is the interview that we did with him once he got back and got healthy. 45:02 We did a one on one with him. 45:04 And I don't know, you know, we'd have to find Chris Withers to see if he stashed that one away and saved it. 45:10 Well, I'm guessing that does I do TV stations keep all this video? 45:15 They must keep a lot of video. 45:16 I don't know if they keep entire games. 45:18 Do they mean what's the policy of like a Fox or even an even an old like who has all the old MSC stuffers? 45:25 Does this stuff get lost? 45:28 Yeah, because storage in the day was was ridiculous. 45:33 I mean, you know, videotape was was big, was bulky, even three quarter inch cassettes. 45:38 I mean, you know, you take a whole season and you're going to fill, you know, a good corner of the room. 45:44 And so it becomes a bit prohibitive. 45:47 And so what I mean, I don't know when the practice started, but they after every game, they would do what's called a melt. 45:59 And they would take just the highlights from however many camera angles there are of goals and certain plays. 46:06 And they would put them into one reel. 46:08 So now everything is condensed for building highlights and future shows, et cetera. 46:13 And that's about all that was saved. 46:16 Now, legally, they may have had to hang on to some stuff in case there was a libel suit or something. 46:21 But when we were in Channel 29, all those games were stored on three quarter inch tape. 46:27 Most of those things are just there. 46:30 They might be in the basement at the university now, but they might be gone, too. 46:36 I mean, you think of that video of you guys doing on Channel 29, you and Wally. 46:42 There's a short video that somebody put on YouTube quite a few years ago. 46:47 Right. 46:47 Like six to eight minute video of some of the highlights of that game that somebody probably had on cassette somewhere, and they digitized it. 46:55 So it was the actual broadcast. 46:56 But yeah, I think you're right, Frank. 46:59 I think just a lot of that stuff is gone. 47:02 And that's unfortunate. 47:03 The digital age is a little different now. 47:05 People load this to YouTube, and it's always there. 47:07 But it's just a lot different now than it was then. 47:14 Well, I'm in my man cave now. 47:16 And I'm looking at two fairly good sized boxes of VHS tapes that I, you know, I would record games and maybe come back and watch them once in a while. 47:28 And then record another half a game over the previous game. 47:32 And so there's some VHS stuff in there back from MSC. 47:36 But I figured once I retired, I might have time to find. 47:41 I don't even know what the games are. 47:43 I don't even know if they're good games, bad games. 47:45 So there might be some stuff in there. 47:48 What I'd like to do is just find and get to a point where there's an anniversary of a game and then kind of put it out in a throwback Thursday kind of thing. 47:57 But don't look for that to happen this year. 48:00 It's going to take a while. 48:02 I'm looking back at some of the videos I saved from 2004. 48:05 I actually had it on a CD. 48:08 There were the highlight videos I did that year. 48:12 They're just tiny little MPEG videos. 48:14 They're like 250 pixels wide. 48:18 You could put them up on YouTube, but they're not going to look great because they were meant for a small screen. 48:23 We all had dial-up back then or something real slow. 48:26 I couldn't make these gigantic videos like you can today. 48:29 I almost think now I'd rather just pull the audio off of those things and hear that instead. 48:39 Especially with the Wooger, you want to hear what the Wooger is saying. 48:42 Yeah, I know, but keep what you got because you'll never get it back. 48:45 Even if it's small, it's all we got now. 48:50 I've got tons of videos all over the. 48:57 Place. 48:57 We've got that famous 2004 Final Five game with North Dakota, Minnesota. 49:28 So I've got this little tiny video of those highlights, and of course, we're hearing you and the Wooger calling that game, which was a fantastic game. 49:37 Was that the Wheeler goal? 49:38 No, that was not the Wheeler goal. 49:39 That was 2004. 49:40 That was when Minnesota was gonna try to go for the three, Pete, and then they were derailed by Duluth in the playoffs. 49:48 All right. 49:51 So what do I have to buy you? 49:52 Like a beef sandwich or a steak to get those files? 49:57 Well, I can just give you a copy of the CD. 50:01 Because the videos are tiny. 50:02 All right, then I'll do one more podcast with you, okay? 50:05 I mean, because these are videos where they're just kind of, I put together and I save them, and so it's obviously not complete games. 50:14 I was just playing the end of that video. 50:15 It was almost a two-minute video doing the highlights of that game. 50:18 And I put a couple on my hard drive here. 50:21 That game, the UMD game before it. 50:24 And I want to say I've got quite a few from that season saved. 50:29 But I mean, that's all that's left. 50:33 I mean, I'm not really sure where else we could find it. 50:35 You know, it would have to be Fox somewhere. 50:38 I'm guessing Fox probably has like those final five games. 50:41 They probably have those saved somewhere. 50:45 Well, again, they probably just melted it down and have the highlights. 50:48 I don't know that they have complete games. 50:49 Maybe. 50:50 They might have the highlights, which might be fine for most people and all. 50:54 But there's a part of the historian in me that would like to hear the whole thing in context. 51:00 I don't know who in the world has got time to do that. 51:03 Well, if you think about it, Veegs, we don't even have the Miracle on Ice anymore. 51:09 I mean, they've lost a large chunk of the Miracle on Ice just because of the same reason. 51:14 Somebody lost some tapes. 51:17 It was a magical time. 51:18 I mean, I've been talking to people about that this whole week about how during that era, there was no NHL team and there was just such a pride around the program that everybody watched it. 51:32 I know, Frank, you were telling me the story about hearing from Mike Gensel, you know, this TV contract is such a big deal. 51:39 Every time I go recruiting on Friday nights, they've got Gopher games on it. 51:45 And that's what everybody watches and everybody talks about. 51:48 And I think when people talk about the glory days of, you know, the WCHA or Gopher Hockey, I think they're kind of talking about the glory days of you and Wooger calling games. 52:00 Well, thank you. 52:01 But I appreciate that. 52:06 I mean, it was a good time, but there, I know there was another era. 52:11 And I'll, this is not a Wooger related story, but it was kind of a learning moment for me. 52:18 It was channel 29 days. 52:21 The Gophers were doing an NCAA series against an Eastern school that I think might have been Princeton. 52:30 And it stretched to three games. 52:34 And I believe at the time, the Simpsons were running on Sunday night. 52:39 Uh-oh. 52:41 Yeah. 52:41 So guess we did not get game three. 52:45 So I came to game three. 52:47 And thinking that the crowds would be like the same that they were on Friday and Saturday, I snuck my kids in the back door, figuring there would be plenty of room for us to sit. 53:00 Well, there wasn't. 53:02 Mariachi Arena was packed. 53:05 The old place was just filled. 53:07 And somehow I came up from the lower level, you know, the fabled wooden staircase coming up and came up and kind of, you know, I think what I did is I followed the team. 53:21 After the team got up the stairs, I went up. 53:24 I just kind of wanted to feel for what was going on. 53:27 And I hit the top of the stairs and the tunnel that then leads past the visitors' bench and onto the ice. 53:34 And there was just this sea of faces in the dark stands because there was no lighting in there and the place was packed. 53:42 And I thought, my God, this is what it was like 10 and 20 years ago when there was no TV. 53:49 And people packed this place. 53:50 I mean, I think there was a passion back then, these. 53:55 And, you know, so yeah, nice. 53:59 I mean, the TV golden era was a big part of it, probably because it got out more statewide. 54:05 But Gopher Hockey has been, as we know, pretty damn big for a long time. 54:10 But I think it kind of took that crowd to another level. 54:16 Like, I grew up going to old Marriott and sitting right behind the penalty box and having students run down from the upper deck to scream obscenities at Northern Michigan players and expanded my vocabulary. 54:30 And I grew up watching Goldie perform on his little catwalk behind the goal. 54:36 You know, that was one level of gopher hockey. 54:39 But to see it, you know, be on TV as people remember it every Friday and Saturday night at 7 with the pregame and the postgame, you know, I think it was just a different level and a different time that people, people really reflect on fondly. 54:56 And that's the new arena play into that. 55:00 I mean, it totally changed the atmosphere for sure. 55:04 You know, you had that kind of old dark building that got really loud and you couldn't quite tell what the fans were in every big play. 55:12 It seemed like everyone had to stand up and you just had that energy in the building. 55:16 And it's a little different in the big open bowl. 55:19 It's a great place to watch a hockey game from your seat, but the atmosphere is definitely different. 55:26 And Wooger knew that right away when right after the building opened, he said, you know, maybe we made a mistake on putting these theater seats in here because now everybody just sits and doesn't do anything. 55:41 And I said, no, Doug, you had to put chair backs in here. 55:45 You couldn't just build a new $20 million building and just have bench seating. 55:51 Although, you know, there are still plenty of college rinks around that do have sections of bench seating, probably for the same reason. 55:58 But yeah, you're right. 56:00 You know, being able to sit back kind of took a little bit of the crowd out of the game. 56:05 But I also remember for plenty of games there when that place was deafeningly loud. 56:12 Oh, yeah. 56:13 When the quote, new Mariucci is full, it can be deafening in there. 56:18 Yeah. 56:19 I mean, it can be very loud. 56:21 I mean, just go back to that penalty shot by Danny Ehrman. 56:24 How much did the roof go off when he scored that goal? 56:27 Because it had been a long time. 56:29 You even said it in your call. 56:30 It's been a long time since we've seen one of these, a penalty shot, because they just weren't called. 56:36 And there it happened, and it was against a big rival in Wisconsin, and the place just blew up. 56:43 And I've said this for years, and everybody knows how I feel about this. 56:46 Mariucci is still the best place to watch a hockey game. 56:50 I don't know if there's better sight lines in such a large arena, because it is steep. 56:55 You're above the glass. 56:57 There's not a bad seat. 57:00 And that's what I've always said. 57:02 Yes, the crowd sits on their hands quite a bit. 57:06 And you think about it, you think the Golden Age of the WCHA in the 90s and 2000s, and even in the 2000s, you guys are on Fox. 57:16 You're competing against the Wild. 57:17 You're competing against these other pro sports, the Timberwolves. 57:21 And the Gopher Hockey broadcasts are routinely beating or getting better ratings than Timberwolves, than the Wild, by a full ratings point. 57:33 That might not mean a lot to a lot of people, but Frank, you know in the TV business, a full ratings point is a pretty large margin when you're talking sports like that. 57:46 Especially when you don't have much of a margin to begin with. 57:48 I mean, the difference between a 2 and a 3 and a 4, which is about all our ratings were, that's significant in terms of, you know, well, double of this and double of that. 58:02 You know, it's obviously not a 10 rating or a 30 like, you know, when there were only three network stations. 58:08 But yeah, we did. 58:11 I remember one night when we hit 275. 58:14 That was Channel 29 as a matter of fact. 58:17 I think Channel 29 had a 275 one night. 58:20 We were ecstatic. 58:23 I mean, you guys became part of the culture, you know, you and the Wooger and actually you and Tom Reed. 58:29 You're in the movie Fargo, for gosh sakes, because someone's watching the Gopher Hockey game in the background. 58:35 And we hear your voice in a frickin movie because you guys kind of became part of the culture in this area. 58:44 Well, and you still get those big residual checks of three pennies every month. 58:48 I don't even... 58:51 Good luck. 58:55 There's actually three movies. 58:56 I can't remember. 58:59 I've been hoping that your resources would find them. 59:03 I do. 59:03 And honestly, I don't remember if it was Grumpy Old Men or Grumpier Old Men. 59:07 Probably both. 59:07 That was one. 59:08 Probably both. 59:09 You think both? 59:10 Well, it fits it. 59:13 And then I don't know, was it one of the Mighty Duck movies? 59:18 I'll have to defer to the Veegs on that because the Ducks were a little on the older side for me. 59:25 That's where I'm at. 59:26 Isn't Veegs Mighty Ducks? 59:28 I just watched Mighty Ducks. 59:29 I do think there is a Gopher clip, but I'm not 100% sure which one it was. 59:36 Well, hey, let me go back to the TV thing. 59:41 And the meaning of that and importance of Doug's, since this show is about him, about his eight years in the color spot and then like 10 altogether, maybe 12, whatever it was on the desk. 59:58 Doug was the face of Gopher Hockey at a time when that program was losing personality. 1:00:06 And Doug was there. 1:00:09 He was the presence. 1:00:12 He kept people engaged. 1:00:14 And I really don't know that the administration appreciated how valuable that was. 1:00:24 He was doing a lot of selling and marketing just by his presence there that otherwise wasn't getting done. 1:00:34 And they miss it now. 1:00:36 They miss it dearly, I think. 1:00:39 Well, it's definitely been a topic on this show, Veegs. 1:00:46 If ever they needed a boost night now, it is someone like the Wooger to be out there, pushing the Gopher Hockey program. 1:00:56 There's no one fix. 1:00:57 No. 1:00:58 I mean, we've definitely figured that out. 1:01:01 Yeah, right. 1:01:02 I mean, we've just seen a whole sea change in society, and college athletics are seeing dips in attendance, and the teams and the 20-year-olds have a different way of engaging. 1:01:21 And I don't know, are they going to be sports fans? 1:01:24 Or are they going to be TV fans? 1:01:26 You know what I mean? 1:01:27 So there's got to be some serious thinking about what happens on a game night. 1:01:33 And I had just a brief conversation with Mark Coyle. 1:01:38 Things are in the works. 1:01:39 They're aware of what they need to do, and they're making some plans ahead. 1:01:46 I can't say what, because I don't know how many of them are actually going to happen, and some might just be still backroom coffee room talks. 1:01:55 But yeah, they're thinking about what they need to do in the building and around the program. 1:02:00 And there's some things that, to me, are very encouraging. 1:02:05 I think I hope will happen soon. 1:02:09 Money is the problem. 1:02:10 I mean, they just raised a ton of money for all of the renovation they did in the locker room area. 1:02:17 And when you talk about changing the size of your rink, that's not going to be cheap. 1:02:22 And then to do anything else for fan amenities. 1:02:25 So, we need to strike an oil well here somewhere and get the pagula money going. 1:02:33 They're working on it though, Veegs, aren't they? 1:02:35 Yeah, they're working on it. 1:02:36 I know the first step is going to be this M Club room, which I think is going to help them maintain that engagement with their history and their past and keep those people around the building because we know hockey is kind of a cult. 1:02:51 And if you can't keep your natives happy, you're going to have a hard time recruiting more people to that cult. 1:02:58 And I think we're going to see that. 1:03:00 We're going to see the weight room finally come to fruition and get that started here during the second semester. 1:03:06 And so you're going to have those small steps. 1:03:08 But I think it's just going to take people because the difference between TV and live sports is the connection. 1:03:15 And that's what you need to create. 1:03:17 And people like Doug Woog, even for people who didn't know him really well, felt that connection. 1:03:23 And so when you're an institution, if you want to be successful, there's a lot that can go into it, selling beer, cheap tickets, winning. 1:03:32 But you want people to have a connection to that program and a desire to want to be there and support it. 1:03:38 And that's lacking a little bit right now. 1:03:41 And it's a big challenge for Mark Coyle and his team to find solutions to. 1:03:47 Why is it ever? 1:03:49 You know, and unfortunately, it's just it's not going to be, it's going to cost some money. 1:03:55 I mean, when you look at the fan experience, whatever all that is, there's a lot that goes into that. 1:04:02 And I don't, I, you know, that's playing to several generations younger than me. 1:04:07 And I don't know. 1:04:09 I'm not a, I'm not a real good predictor of what is going to be good demand. 1:04:16 But they got to find out what it's going to be to tap into people and get them back. 1:04:20 You know, winning is going to help. 1:04:21 No question about that. 1:04:23 That's the first thing. 1:04:24 That is the very first thing right there is winning. 1:04:27 Well, it gives them some momentum to move forward, but it's always more expensive to rebuild than to support. 1:04:33 And they're in a stage where they have to rebuild. 1:04:35 And it's going to take some efforts from the ground up. 1:04:39 I was talking to Mick Lutty today about how when he played, they would take the team on the road to Towns to play little inner squad scrimmages. 1:04:48 And he had the team come up to Hibbing to play in his old barn up there as kind of a way to showcase Pat before his senior year. 1:04:58 I think there's some things they are starting to do a little bit of community engagement. 1:05:02 You see the Edina guys go back to Edina and skate with their youth programs. 1:05:07 You saw Johnny Sorensen go back to St. 1:05:09 Louis Park and do small things with their association there. 1:05:12 But those are the kinds of things that can create legacy situations and engagements for the program that I think they really need to focus on. 1:05:21 It's going to be a long road. 1:05:23 It's doable. 1:05:26 It is doable. 1:05:26 I mean, Veegs and I have talked about this a lot. 1:05:30 Some of the stuff they just weren't prepared for. 1:05:32 I mean, in the past, when you have 8,000 season tickets, you only have to worry about selling a couple thousand a game. 1:05:38 And with a successful team, that's pretty easy. 1:05:42 But now you've got under 5,000 season tickets. 1:05:46 Now you basically have to sell the same amount or more in every game for a team that's struggling. 1:05:56 So it's just a huge kind of mountain that they weren't prepared for. 1:06:01 And honestly, I don't know if they could really see it coming. 1:06:04 I mean, just so many things happened at once here, Veegs, and now it's just going to take time. 1:06:11 It will take time. 1:06:14 It will be important for them to remember where they came from and figure out if they can connect with those again. 1:06:20 I think as they pay tribute to the Wooger here over the rest of the season, I know there will be multiple events planned for that and multiple ways to do that. 1:06:29 But I think just that history is something they'll be focused on here. 1:06:34 Frank, have they announced? 1:06:37 I saw an internal email. 1:06:38 I know that there are two games on tap, but I don't think they've announced. 1:06:44 So there are plans for two games in the future, celebratory kind of things. 1:06:51 So all I can say right now is just watch for them. 1:06:55 I think they're going to be fun events. 1:06:57 And then the Community Memorial or Celebration of Life, that's South St. 1:07:04 Paul High School, that's been pretty well publicized. 1:07:08 I know Noah is talking to Jan Woog, his wife, and she made it sound like come one, come all. 1:07:17 They want a bunch of people there. 1:07:21 It's going to be very informal. 1:07:22 She said there's going to be no meet and greet line. 1:07:24 We're not going to have a receiving line of the widow and all the bereaved. 1:07:28 But it's just going to come in. 1:07:30 They're going to have a little program at 1 o'clock. 1:07:32 They're going to tell some stories. 1:07:34 And people are just going to get together. 1:07:35 And I thought that's a pretty darn good way to do it. 1:07:40 I plan on going. 1:07:41 I'm going to bring my camera. 1:07:42 And like I said, just have a fun time. 1:07:45 And that's what I think they want to do. 1:07:46 Just let's celebrate. 1:07:49 Because that's what the Wooger would want us to do. 1:07:51 Because, boy, have fun. 1:07:54 I'll probably want you to go to the Croatian Hall afterwards, too. 1:08:04 It is a little odd, though, that we lost both Glenn and the Wooger on the same day. 1:08:09 Four years apart. 1:08:11 I mean... 1:08:12 You know, geez, and now we lose Scott Kleinendorff. 1:08:15 Yes. 1:08:15 You know, in the same month as Doug. 1:08:18 I mean, it's... 1:08:18 holy smokes. 1:08:20 And we know that Glenn bled maroon and gold as much as anyone else. 1:08:25 And it was, you know, because I remember seeing a memory come up on my Facebook that day of, you know, I had some pictures show up of Glenn when they did his on ice retirement and the whole thing a couple years back. 1:08:40 And then I'm like, ooh, oh boy, that's four years ago. 1:08:44 You know, Glenn died four years ago. 1:08:45 And then just a few hours later, we hear about the Wooger. 1:08:49 Yeah. 1:08:49 And now everyone's going to be saying next year, we've got to keep everyone safe on that day. 1:08:55 Just add two definite talismans of gopher hockey. 1:08:59 You got Samor, who could find a way to give three stars to Gophers and an eight-zero loss. 1:09:10 I mean, that guy, he took a shot in the toast, you know. 1:09:16 He defaced an onslaught. 1:09:18 It could have been 16-0 if he wasn't in there. 1:09:21 You know, I've actually got a small audio clip of Glenn here that I wanted to share with you guys. 1:09:26 This happened back on October 16th, 2010. 1:09:32 And this is, you hear Glenn, you have to listen quietly, but you can tell Glenn was not happy here. 1:09:50 And if you didn't catch that, that was live on the air. 1:09:53 Glenn in the background saying, ah, shit. 1:09:59 And I believe this has happened a couple of times, but somebody sent me that audio file years ago. 1:10:04 And I, I held on to it and there's Glenn under his breath. 1:10:08 I mean, because, I mean, it hurt him physically every time the Gophers lost. 1:10:15 And there he is. 1:10:16 I don't think you'll ever do this on the air with Wally Frank, but Wally's had to keep Glenn in check quite a few times. 1:10:28 And I hope I hit that again. 1:10:31 And, and ah shit. 1:10:33 And please don't ever do that, Frank. 1:10:36 We want to hear you on the radio for a long time. 1:10:38 I don't know if they'll give you the same kind of pass they gave Glenn. 1:10:44 No, I say I wouldn't get, they wouldn't give me rope. 1:10:46 They would give me a piece of string. 1:10:52 Well, we need to wrap this up. 1:10:53 We've been going for over an hour here. 1:10:56 Us old guys need to get to bed, don't we? 1:10:59 But Frank, you know, I really appreciate you coming on. 1:11:02 I know you've been overwhelmed with requests to be on radio and all over the place, other podcasts. 1:11:09 And everybody's always going to link you to the Wooger. 1:11:13 Like I said, that's a great thing. 1:11:14 But we really appreciate you coming on. 1:11:18 And just talking, just sharing stories. 1:11:23 And I appreciate that. 1:11:24 I mean, I think that was the first thing I asked you when you said, can you come on? 1:11:28 I said, you know, can we just BS for a while? 1:11:31 Or do I have to? 1:11:33 And so it's been fun. 1:11:34 I hope we've kept everybody engaged here. 1:11:38 I hope whoever's driving listened to this. 1:11:41 Maybe they're in Duluth by now. 1:11:45 Maybe. 1:11:49 But yeah, we'll definitely have Frank back on again. 1:11:51 You know, he's he is one of our regulars on the podcast and he has been on the podcast more than anyone else. 1:11:57 And now he's indebted to you, too. 1:12:00 So why is he for that for that video file you're going to give him? 1:12:03 Yeah, I got quite a few video files. 1:12:06 I'll find them and I'll have to I'll bring them to the next game and show them to you, Frank. 1:12:09 You'll get all excited. 1:12:10 You'll love it. 1:12:12 I think Vegoe's got something going there that you're you're not quite picking up on. 1:12:17 I don't know. 1:12:20 You know, it's like V, explain it to him. 1:12:26 I'm not going to say, Craig, you can use those and hold me hostage to get back on the air more often. 1:12:32 Exactly. 1:12:33 I think we should parceling those out so we can get them on more frequently. 1:12:37 Well, all right. 1:12:38 Listen, just give me some advance notice because every time you call, I got to find some way to load Skype on my device here. 1:12:46 I use it once a year, okay? 1:12:48 I'm tech savvy, but this one be fun. 1:12:51 Yeah, we know. 1:12:53 We had you on not too long ago and you'd already deleted it. 1:12:55 Of course. 1:12:56 You thought it'd be a long time, but we got you back on it. 1:12:58 But we're really glad you came on, Frank. 1:13:00 I know it's a tough week. 1:13:03 We lost the Wooger, but there's just so many good memories there. 1:13:07 And we're glad you came on and shared it with us. 1:13:10 Thank you. 1:13:11 My pleasure. 1:13:12 And Dupe and Veegs for you guys, always. 1:13:15 I'll be there. 1:13:17 Well, that's going to do it for this episode of the GPL Podcast. 1:13:20 I'm going to once again thank Frank for coming on and celebrating Doug's life with us. 1:13:25 For those of you listening live, we'll probably not have much of an overtime here because it's late. 1:13:31 But we'll be back in January with a regular podcast. 1:13:33 So have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.