Re: Wisconsin Badgers 2016-2017
It was an interesting weekend of hockey. On Friday night, the diehard fans were treated to a clinic and one of the more dominant Badger wins in some time. Outside of one early glitch that allowed a breakaway attempt that was stopped by Desbiens, St. Cloud didn't really threaten to score at all. All lines were clicking for Wisconsin and seemed to bury every high quality chance they had.
For me personally, Fill the Bowl was kind of a mixed result. First, I give St. Cloud credit for clearly being determined to not get routed in front of a huge crowd and televised audience. They kept a lot of players back on defense which minimized or eliminated any Badger odd-man rushes. While Wisconsin had a ton of shots/shot attempts, there didn't seem like an outrageous number of high quality scoring chances. That and Alder just played better in goal. Unfortunately, Wisconsin has really struggled to score goals in the Fill the Bowl games. Some of that is based on the opponent (Minnesota in '14), but just in general have not played their best hockey in front of the big crowds. Not saying it needed to be 9-0, but you could tell the team was pressing leading to missed passes and shots off-target. I wouldn't have thought anything of it if it was played at LaBahn, but it wasn't a showcase game for the program.
The overall environment of the game was good, but not great. I won't debate that the pre-game introductions and national anthem (with the kids holding the massive American flag) was stunning. However, there were some logistical issues that I'm surprised were made. First, I think that the reserved seating policy did not produce the desired results. While there was definite coverage in all sections in all decks, there were also empty seats in almost every section. At the very least, general admission would have almost certainly filled the lower bowl to capacity along with the best seats in the second and third deck.
On a similar note, I don't understand the people that bought tickets and either didn't show or didn't give/sell them to those who would. I initially bought a lot of tickets not knowing how many friends and family would attend. Unfortunately, due to people working/having other plans, I had over a dozen extra tickets. Instead of just eating them, I spent an extra 10 minutes outside of Kohl and was able to give them away to some very appreciative fans who didn't realize it was a sell-out. It frustrates me that I'm sure there were hundreds of fans turned away when there were probably a couple of thousand seats unused. Everything I heard about reserved seating was supposed to solve this. It clearly didn't.
I also realize that school isn't in session yet, but the complete lack of a student section hurt the overall atmosphere. In the days of Fill the Bowl general admission, students naturally gravitated to the area of the men's student section. That combined with an unusually small band (for a Kohl Center game), was very noticeable for how loud it was. It also didn't seem like there was much coordination between the band and whoever was running the video board/sound. On more than one occasion, the band would start playing only to get completely drowned out by loud, canned music.
Even Phil wasn't at the top of his game. He completely forgot to do the "We want more" chant after the first goal. And with no student section, nobody chanted his name to remind him. I don't know, maybe he was tired from getting a lot of work on Friday night.
Ultimately, at the end of the weekend, it was successful with a league sweep, a record crowd and a nice food haul for a local charity. However, if Fill the Bowl is only going to be once every 2-3 years, it should be done a little differently to produce an even better atmosphere and game environment. I realize that every other women's program (and a lot of mens programs) would kill to have a game like this, but the bar has been set pretty high here.