A Geffman Twog...nay, a novella. 14,000 characters, @jtbourne couldn't fathom a hockey player constructing so many words together. After last weeks issue of goaltender abuse, I had flashbacks and a vault full of experiences. So I thought I would offer free tickets on my ride down Memory Lane.



When you are a young kid, playing in your backyard, you always envision yourself winning the game, the crowd cheering your name. Never do you prepare yourself for playing that game in the opposing arena. With fatherhood around the corner, (hopefully down the street a ways), I am ready to prepare my young future puck stopper for the mental trials a goaltender must endure as he ascends through the ranks in the hockey world. As he day dreams in the backyard while a neighbor shoots pucks at him, I will be yelling out the 2nd floor window. "GEFFFF-ERRRRRT! GEFFFFF-ERRRRT! YOU SUCK!" "SIEVE SIEVE SIEVE!!!!" It is best to get prepared early. I wasn't prepared and early on it did play with my head a bit. I will now share with you the experiences with verbal abuses I have had along my journeyman career. So buckle up, pack a suitcase, it's been quite the ride.



Before I start the car, I must acknowledge my last name. Now nobody gets to choose their last name, besides women intending to marry, but for us guys, the name we are born into sticks with us until it is engraved on our headstone. I like my last name. Goepfert. If I could change or tweak it a little bit, I would get rid a silent letter or two. It is a German last name and I guess it was Americanized in its pronunciation, so the way it is supposed to be said is "Geff-ert". Needless to say it gets mispronounced a lot. Doctors offices, schools, telemarketers and yes even unruly fans. But we will get into that a little bit later. Ok, lets start the ignition.



The first time I can remember being verbally heckled was when I was 11 years old. I grew up on Long Island and played my minor hockey there. We would play all over the east coast but our league was pretty much consisting of teams in and around Long Island. A new team was added into our league that year. The Staten Island Sharks. We had a good team (best on LI) and so we travelled into the Staten Island in mid October to take on the "expansion" Sharks. I believe they were winless and it should have been a breeze. Every player on their teams last name ended in a vowel. Go figure. So the game starts and they score early. Their families in Adidas track suits jumping up and down as their gold chains glistened in the fluorescent lighting. And then another one. Just like that we were down 2-0 early and the parents on the other team were close enough I could here them say, "Deez Guyz aren't dat Good!" "Dare goalie stinks! VINNY! Shoot at dis guy!" Boom another. I remember being in net thinking to myself, "Am I really not that good, or does Vinny have an excellent shot." The heroics of good friend and teammate Chris Higgins saved us from losing that game as I think we came out on top something like 8-4 but it was a long ride for me back over the Verrazano Bridge.



Fast forward a couple years to my 1st year in Bantams. We played the Syracuse Stars. They were a good team and we always had heated battles. There was one player who was in my ear all game. I cant remember his name, but I remembered getting pissed and talking back to him. I am filled with Ellis island blood (German/Irish/Italian) so the temper is genetic. I trash talked back, slashed him, the whole 9 yards. He scored once, and the chirps got worse and so did my temper. He scored again, ten fold. His hat trick was the final straw as I received the first penalty of my career. Learned my first lesson at age 13. Keep your mouth shut. Stay composed.



At age 17, I left Long Island to play in the USHL with the Cedar Rapids Roughriders. This would be the first time I would play in front of people who paid to come watch the game. Fans with no relation to the players other than they were there to cheer them on and root for their home team. Cedar Rapids has a huge rivalry with Waterloo as they are separated by 40 miles or so and were owned by the same guy so it was proximity along with bragging rights. They hated us, we hated them. My first trip there was an eye opener. It was loud, rowdy and full of animosity. They scored early and the whole place started yelling "Sieve". Luckily for me, I had no idea what a sieve was and that it was directed for me. I just thought it was the guy who scored the goal. Only after they scored the next 2, I knew the same guy didn't have all 3 so in between periods I asked an older guy what they were chanting. I learned that intermission what a sieve was, but still to this day find it odd that "Sieve" universally chanted after goals. Now the second period starts. In Waterloo, the goal for the visiting goalie in the 2nd period stood directly below the beer garden, where blue collar adult men, would flood their bodies with alcohol and berate the visiting netminder. Tonight on the menu was me. "Hey Go-Fart. You Suck" "Your mother…." I will not repeat what they said about my mother but it wasn't true. She had never been to Waterloo she assured me, and at that point I think the furthest west she had been was Hoboken. These guys were in my head. I couldn't hear them while playing, but stoppages when I would get water I could hear them as if they were right next to me. So I developed a method to sing to myself in between stoppages. It helped a great deal. Though guys on my team thought I was on another planet until I told them what I was doing.



*Funny side note* My parents came to visit on Thanksgiving and we were in Waterloo. My dad used to like standing behind my goal every period to watch. Even in the 2nd period in Waterloo. Those hooligans still berating me. I remember vaguely hearing, "Hey Go-Fart, your moms a &%$@#!" Then a long pause. Then, "But your dads pretty cool." I looked up only to see my dad and the guys who have been harassing me having a laugh and then beers together for the rest of the period.



The next stop on the verbal harassment tour takes us to the collegiate level. At this point, you are an adult (or atleast think so), you have thought you have heard it all, thinking you are immune to whatever foul grossness opposing schools student sections can throw your way. Leave it to the intellectual wit of America's rising youth to change your thinking. My best advice for any goaltender trying to avoid being a target of the rabid student sections: 1.) It's unavoidable. You will always be the subject of ridicule while you stand alone in your crease, the foam flowing down the mouths of face painted, jersey wearing school supporters. 2.) Do NOT make any headlines in a negative fashion. Go to class, pass your tests and cite your sources. Often in life, the lessons you learn are through experience, and this is the lesson I learned with the brunt of the metaphoric nun's ruler. I started my collegiate career at Providence College playing in the Hockey East. There were cool atmospheres, with great and unmerciful student sections. My academic struggles were widely publicized, leading me to take classes during Christmas break to stay eligible. I did well on my class and was eligible, only to go to Maine the weekend back from break to a cardboard cut out behind my net, "Goepfert Can't Read My Sign." The thing is I am not stupid, I just had a hard time juggling hockey and school. It's like trying to juggle 2 girlfriends. You start spending all your time with one girl, and the other girl gets suspicious, looks in your phone, and before you know it you are single.



I became "single" in the summer of '05 after my final mishap in school. Not to go into too much detail, because I feel like I have told this story 10000000 times, but I was accused of plagiarism on a final paper. In hindsight, I did do it. Intentionally? No. Ignorantly? Yes. I submitted my paper via email after getting an extension on it, however, I did not include a bibliography with it. It was pretty much the exact scenario in "Finding Forrester", but I wasn't buddy/buddy with a brilliant generational author and stole his work. I used data from peoples research to strengthen the argument in the paper, but the professor I had, and the one in the movie are identical in look and their nature, it is uncanny. But anyway…Before I knew it I was back home reading an email from my Professor and before I can reply to it, my phone was ringing from my coach and in an unpleasant, unfriendly fashion telling me I screwed up for the last time, and I was off the team. Anywho, transferring to the WCHA and SCSU was great, but this hanging over my head was material for every and all opposing buildings for my last 2 years of college hockey in some of the most unfriendly but yet creative student sections in the country.



My first game back playing was a non-conference game in Northern Michigan. An article was published earlier that week explaining "Goepfert-Gate" and my mistakes. After the anthem was sung, a student yelled, "Hey Goat-Fart, who's writing your papers now!?" And so this was my cross to bare. In Colorado College, the whole student section behind me with papers in their hands. I didn't think anything of it until I noticed overtime I would get a drink of water, they would make it a point to hold it up. I looked close to the student on the glass and on the piece of computer paper was 2 words, "Goepfert's Bibliography". And then the most creative assault to date was in Wisconsin. Their student section is great and very rowdy towards the opposing goalie. During a stoppage in play, the whole section and what seemed like the whole building, was singing a song about me. To the tune of "Mary Had a Little Lamb"…



"Goepfert is a plagiarist, plagiarist, plagiarist.

Goepfert is a Plagiarist,

He got kicked out of school…"



I think there was more to it, but that's all I caught. I couldn't help but smile because I thought to myself, "damn, that was well thought out, well organized and perfectly executed." Long gone are the days of "Your Mothers". There were many more similar heckles about my Providence mishaps, but those are the ones that stood out. You reap what you sow. Thats a farming term I suppose, and growing up in a concrete jungle I really don't understand it, but what I have come to grasp of it is that it pretty much means if you plant corn, you will be picking corn…hell I still don't get it. Anyway, what I am trying to say is the best defense for a rowdy, rambunctious, involved crowd is to not give them more ammo for their assaults. It is much tougher these days, where everything is published on the internet. Stories, video clips, bad goals, bad choice of words in the paper, you name it, they will use it. And if you have loaded up their six shooter, be prepared to duck the shots.



And now the professional level, which I can't really write much about. For the most part crowds haven't been real personal or creative in the heckles, just your standard, "sieves" "you suck" yada yada yada… Given I have only bounced back and forth from the ECHL and AHL and haven't really been a high profile target in either place. In europe, most chants are in a different language so I have no idea what they are saying. They whistle instead of boo here overseas, but none have been directed at me yet (I don't think), but if they do, I'll just pretend they whistle because I look good. Getting "cat called" is a compliment. The occasional social network heckle occurs ala Facebook and Twitter, but it doesn't bother me at all. Not that I am encouraging you all to heckle me on these social networks, but I find it amusing and makes realize how far my heckling journey has come. Fathers of players yelling at me in Staten Island to now having people I have never met in places I've never been using the typed word as their weapon. Technology is wonderful...



As a goalie, you have to learn from all the good and bad that is thrown your way. Never let any situation effect you or your play. Develop your dragon scales early, realize that most times chants and heckles are aimed your way because you are doing something that makes the crowd think they can/need to get you off your game. Cue Jay-Z song…"Gon' brush your shoulder off!"



I have been through quite a bit, but no more than your typical goalies out there. Choosing to become a goaltender, you need to accept having the pressure and notoriety that comes with the position. Your not only a target on the ice, but from the crowd. Roll with the punches, laugh it off and smile. It's a game. Same as it was when you were a young boy in your back yard. Though my future son might have a different opinion of that from all the, "Sieve!", "You are worse than you dad!" and "Your mother went to Waterloo once but nothing happened! Atleast that's what she said! But I am not so sure! We both have black hair and you have blond hair! Think about it." What if that happens? What if my kid does have blond hair? Oh boy, now I am in my own head. Perhaps I don't have dragon scales…



In closing, I would like to address the fans of the game out there. Don't stop heckling. It really adds to the atmosphere of the game and the nature of the position. Obviously there are boundaries to all things, but from my experience, as passionate as hockey fans are, they know the boundaries of good taste and not cross over that line. But keep doing it. It wasn't easy for the rest of us to deal with it, so the future goalies of the world shouldn't have it any easier. In the end, who knows, maybe years from now, your chant or heckle will be twogged about by an aging goalie, as he smiles and laughs remembering it, shaking his head thinking to himself, "Good one…"





*If you need a bibliography for this article, please contact my attorney.



Geffman47: Came to a fork in the road. Took the road with rabid-fan-filled arenas.



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