For a team accustomed to winning, and winning a lot, Saturday's final result was a cruel ending.
The sweep at the hands of the Ohio State Buckeyes was a frustrating closure to what had already been a trying season for the Wisconsin women's hockey team. The results gave OSU a win in the first-round three-game series and sent the team to the WCHA Final Face-off next weekend, while it ended the Badgers' season.
Both game-winners came in extra time, the second one punctuating a difficult moment for the team.
""It's really hard,"" senior forward Kyla Sanders said, fighting back tears. ""It's very different [ending the season at this point], that's for sure.""
The Badgers had ended the previous four seasons in the NCAA title game, winning three times, but this year struggled after losing eight players and head coach Mark Johnson, who left to coach the U.S. Olympic team.
""[The loss] is rough, but it was a tough year,"" senior forward Jasmine Giles said after her final game as a Badger. ""We had so many new faces, a whole new coaching staff. It's just something we didn't overcome, we were getting there, but we didn't do it.""
Instead, the team fell into a pattern of unpredictable levels of play that drove it from a spot as one of the sports' elites. The Badgers only strung together more than two straight wins once in the season, routinely splitting against teams in the league's lower echelons.
The final weekend's games seemed to reflect the season, as the team's play was uneven through the six-plus periods of hockey.
""The great teams are consistent in all categories, intensity level, the mental components,"" interim head coach Tracey DeKeyser said. ""We were inconsistent for a majority of the season, and that's why we didn't have the success we wanted. Hopefully they take that message, and it's going to take a lot of work, away from the rink too, being constant.""
Without that constancy, the Badgers, who for that four-year stretch had been associated with strong positive characteristics, garnered mostly negative ones in the 2009-'10 season.
Wisconsin's 15 losses were the most for a single season in the program's history, one more than the first year the school played women's hockey. It was the first time since 2004 that the team did not make it to the NCAA Tournament, the first time it ever finished below third place in the WCHA standings and the first time it will not reach the semifinal round of the league tournament.
In the previous seven years, the Badgers had lost five games to WCHA teams besides perennial powers Minnesota and Minnesota-Duluth. In 2009-'10 they lost nine games to that cast of opponents.
Ironically, they went 4-3-1 against the Gophers and Bulldogs.
There were extenuating circumstances, as the loss of four Olympians, two who would have been on the team this year, was compounded by a group of blueliners decimated by injuries. One defender quit, another took a leave with an injury and a third was hurt and did not play in the final three games. The Badgers dressed only five defenders against the Buckeyes, penciling in little-used sophomore forward Carla Pentimone at the sixth defensive spot.
Looking ahead, Johnson will return next year to a team that features a fair amount of talent with forwards Brooke Ammerman, Mallory Deluce, Brianna Decker and Carolyne Prévost. Sophomore forward Hilary Knight and junior forward Meghan Duggan, who combined for 139 points in their last season as Badgers, will also rejoin the team.
The goaltending spot will likely fall to Becca Ruegsegger, who split time in net this year but had trouble with consistency.
After the final game Saturday, DeKeyser used her postgame speech with the team to underscore the lessons of a difficult year.
""We talked about how losing can help you understand what it takes to win, and hopefully the returners understand that you don't just get handed trophies or championships,"" DeKeyser said. ""It starts the next week or two for next year. Take some time here to debrief and collect themselves and be students for a couple days or weeks, and then we start up again.""
And so comes a new beginning from what was, by any measure, a painful end.
