A dude could get dizzy standing on his head for a month.
“He is special,” Jim Graeber, DU Class of ’92, gushed from the entrance end of the Stadium Inn Saturday night, hoisting a beer in the direction of Pioneers goalie Matt Davis. “Especially in the clutch.”
They’re the anti-Avs, aren’t they? Great goaltending, like defense and the run game in the NFL, still travels.
And at the University of Tenver, it travels first-class.
“MAT-TY DAVIS!”
Clap, clap, clap-clap-clap!
“MAT-TY DAVIS!”
Boston College, the nation’s No. 1 team, hadn’t been shut out all season. Until it ran into the nation’s No. 1 net-minder.
While Davis had the top-ranked Boston College Eagles eating out of his mitts, he had the eyeballs at the Stadium Inn, a 14-minute stagger from Magness Arena, locked onto every save.
“DEE-FENSE!”
Clap-clap!
“DEE-FENSE!”
With 90 seconds left in Pios 2, BC 0, cinching an NCAA-record 10th national hockey championship for DU, everybody at the Inn was 19 again, invincible and gorgeous, staring down from the top of the world.
“IT’S ALL OVER!”
Clap, clap, clap-clap-clap!
“IT’S ALL OVER!”
Y’all ain’t seen a party like a Pios party.
“You’ll either see us burn a couch with excitement,” Gabbie Berger promised me as the puck dropped up in St. Paul. “Or not burn a couch with non-excitement.”
Berger majored in psychology at DU. Which was a kick, given how many folks in crimson and gold went out of their freaking minds.
“(EXPLETIVE) BC!”
Clap, clap, clap-clap-clap!
“(EXPLETIVE) BC!”
At 2 in the afternoon, the Inn had a line 20 undergrads deep snaking out the front door. At 3:30, the jukebox started cranking Credence Clearwater Revival’s “Have You Ever Seen The Rain,” John Fogerty’s earthy voice cutting through the din.
“I’m so jacked up,” said Rich Wisniewski, the Inn’s GM, who came to work wearing a white “DENVER” hockey sweater gifted to him by a DU fan 15 years ago. “Those (Pios) are awesome.”
Wisniewski and his bar staff — Rich, Heather, Jestina and Fabio — weren’t too shabby themselves, keeping order in a classic dive with a capacity of 92 customers.
“And we’re at it right now,” Wisniewski said. “One in, one out. We’re riding it right now.”
Wisniewsk’s held court here for two decades now. Or as he prefer to count, for five DU national titles.
“Oh, this is on pace to be our biggest day ever,” he laughed.
The old record?
During DU’s NCAA title win two years ago. Naturally.
“And I plan on beating that,” he said.
At Tenver, even the bars want to raise the bar.
“I BELIEVE!”
“I BELIEVE THAT!”
“I BELEIVE THAT WE WILL WIN!”
“I BELIEVE THAT WE WILL WIN!”
For Henry Brown, a DU sophomore from Massachusetts, a scoreless first period dragged an old memory back from the cobwebs. About seven years ago, he was playing a pickup hockey game back home when an 11-year-old turned up and started skating absolute circles around the bigger kids.
That tyke grew up to be BC star Will Smith.
“He was sooooo good,” Brown told me. “My cousin was on his club team. We went out later. (Smith) was really quiet. Kept to himself. Wasn’t the life of the party.”
The Inn was party central Saturday. Berger wasn’t kidding. As the sun started to set, it looked like a heck of a night to be a Pio. And a lousy night to be a love seat.
“What do you recommend?” Berger asked Wisniewski during the pregame hullabaloo.
“Straight whiskey.”
“Don’t take him up on that,” her friend advised.
She pondered.
“Do you make strawberry margaritas?”
“We don’t,” Wisniewski replied. “I make margaritas. I don’t make strawberry margaritas.”
The Inn is the diver’s dive, a boozer where memories live and brain cells go to die. It was born in 1939 as a pharmacy/soda shop, Rich said, a corner bar with a low ceiling and high spirits. They still offer ceremonial degrees on “Bourbonology” here, with the honorees memorialized on a series of barrel tops that hang on a wall opposite the bar.
It’s a slice of Eliot Ness and Joe DiMaggio in an era of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, a watering hole that’s hung in for almost 10 decades. But only just.
“There was a back wall that got crashed into when I first started working here and it was insulated with newspapers,” Wisniewski chuckled. “And those newspapers were from the ’20s. Somebody backed into the wall from the parking lot.”
Still, just like Davis between the pipes, the old building held fast and firm. Forever in DU lore. Forever in DU hearts.