Friday, Oct. 17, the Ducks hockey team will face Washington, the team’s biggest rival in the league, in the home opener at Lane Events Center. Each year, both teams square off in a brutal four-game series for the I-5 Cup.
Last year, Washington won in a shootout after splitting the series 2-2. The year before, Oregon took it home for the first time in four years after an overtime victory.
“We don’t play Oregon State in hockey,” senior goaltender Trevor Peterson said. “This is really our biggest rival. We have the I-5 Cup and that’s our thing, our big game.”
Unsatisfied with its brief time with the cup, the team has spent the last month releasing Youtube videos with the hashtag #TakeBackTheCup to pump up fans, and themselves, for the start of the regular season.
The video idea came from the broadcast’s commentator Isaac Rosenthal and its director/executive producer Dylan Lee. After last year’s debt crisis, the two knew they had to get people to fill the stands. Rosenthal produced the ideas for sketches while Lee filmed. The process went a lot smoother than planned.
“You know, we thought it was going to be difficult to get people on the team to do them, but Isaac came in with the ideas and they were stoked,” Lee said. “Right from the get go they were like, ‘Okay, let’s do it.’ They were super excited to get out there, and they’re funny guys so it was nice to see them shine in that aspect as well.”
Currently, the videos range from preparing food in the off-season to playing basketball; the latter being Peterson and Patrick Sgarlata missing basket after basket while shooting hoops.
“I’d like to say that it (missing baskets) was faked, and some of it might’ve been, but they definitely tried to take a few and they definitely missed them,” Lee said, laughing. “They farmed it up a bit to make it funnier, but not much.”
“I am actually terrible at basketball so that was all legit,” Peterson said.
Even one of the hockey moms, Tracy Cockriel, was incorporated into a video with her son, Danny. While he played NHL 2k15 in his goalie mask, she cheered on his team as she would at a regular game – loudly and passionately. She also did the entire thing in a single cut.
“That video was hilarious,” Peterson said. “Same with my monologue (from a separate video), she was screaming like that for at least a good 10-15 minutes.”
Yet, there were times when she nearly lost her composure.
“I was trying not to laugh,” she said. “My daughter was sitting there off to the side…and she looked mortified.”
“I’m still waiting for my Oscar, though,” she joked.
It’s safe to say that more videos can be expected as fans on the team’s Facebook page like the videos and the players enjoying making them.
“We have a few ideas,” Lee said. “We’re working on getting some well-known aspects of Oregon hockey some people and regulars in there. We’ll leave it at that.”
[Originally published here by the Daily Emerald on October 2, 2014]