The top-ranked Wisconsin Badgers women’s hockey team put their November 15th tie with St. Cloud State in the rear view mirror as they swept the No. 15 St. Thomas Tommies at LaBahn Arena, winning 8-0 Thursday and 4-3 in overtime Friday.
The Badgers have beaten St. Thomas all 19 times they’ve taken the ice together.
Badgers shutout Tommies
Hannah Sarnoff
A short week of rest was no problem for the Badgers, who crushed No. 15 St. Thomas 8-0 on Thursday night in Madison.
With the compressors down earlier in the day, the ice looked bad. The grounds crew was able to get the ice where it needed to be, but the surface, was still visibly slippery at the beginning, with players falling right after jumping off the bench.
The first five minutes of the game were back and forth, but when the Badgers kept the puck in the zone, they gained more control.
With 11:11 remaining in the first period, forward and alternate captain Lacey Eden rushed to take control of a loose puck heading into the Tommies zone, laying up a perfect pass for forward and alternate captain Kelly Gorbatenko, who put the Badgers on the board.
Wisconsin went on the power play just a minute later, but the Tommies had a good kill.
With just 2:30 to go in the period, captain and defenseman Caroline Harvey took the puck from the wall and shot it past St. Thomas goalie Dani Strom to make the score 2-0.
But Wisconsin’s offensive rush wasn’t finished yet, and with 26.2 seconds remaining in the period, forward Cassie Hall passed the puck from behind the net to forward Claire Enright to end the period 3-0.
The second period had a much slower start, even with good conversions in the neutral zone. Three minutes into the period, Wisconsin was on the power play but were unable to make anything happen.
Just over half way into the period, Eden, on a one-on-three, sent the puck into the top left of the net, making it 4-0 Badgers and prompting St. Thomas to make a switch at goalie. At the end of the period, Wisconsin went up on another power play, but Adela got called for unsportsmanlike conduct just as the buzzer sounded.
The third period started off on a four-on-four, but neither team scored.
However, the Tommies did come close to getting on the board, as a minute into the period an open Whitney Horton shot on goalie Ava McNaughton, who lunged for the save. The Tommies are known for the power play unit, but they were no match for McNaughton.
Shortly after, Badger defender Laney Potter took the puck off the back wall and shot one in from the goal line.
With 12 minutes left to play, St. Thomas got called for tripping Harvey. A minute later, Harvey shot one high, and it was tipped by Eden for the Badgers’ sixth goal of the night.
Throughout the game. Wisconsin had a strong hustle to get down the ice and avoid icing calls. With a big lead, this sense of hustle did not waver, as Finely McCarthy was able to beat the Tommie defender(?) and passed it back for forward Charlotte Pieckenhagen to score.
With under two minutes to go, Wisconsin found themselves on their sixth power play. To cap off the night, Hall passed to center, allowing Grace Bickett to score her first career goal as a Badger and punctuate a dominating night from the Badgers.
Overtime thriller
While game one was largely devoid of drama, game two on Friday was chock-full of it.
After her team gave up eight goals the night before, St. Thomas head coach Bethany Brausen put her normal starter, Clarkson transfer Julia Minotti, in the net.
The Badgers started the first period strong, logging their first six shots on goal before the Tommies were able to test McNaughton once.
The game’s chaos didn’t truly show itself until around the 12:00 mark, when St. Thomas fanned on two grade-A chances before the two teams played along all 200 feet of the ice, seeing multiple rush chances.
The Badgers kept applying pressure until McCarthy was dealt a tripping minor with a little under 7:00 left in the first period.
It only took St. Thomas 26 seconds to capitalize on the power play when Ellah Hause and Ilsa Lindaman got the puck in the crease for Madison Brown to flick into the back of the net.
Wisconsin continued to pepper Minotti with shots, but the St. Thomas netminder wasn’t letting anything through.
St. Thomas’ Cara Sajevic got a breakaway with 3:29 left to play in the first, but was hooked by Šapovalivová. With only the goaltender between Sajavic and the net, Šapovalivová was lucky to only get the minor penalty and not give St. Thomas a penalty shot.
St. Thomas controlled play for the rest of the period, but they couldn’t add to their lead.
Six minutes into the second period, Potter was sent to the box for cross-checking giving the Tommies, who have the sixth best power play percentage in the nation, a prime chance to double their lead.
However, the only goal on the power play would be Wisconsin’s as Eden deked out Minotti to tie the game at 1-1.
Immediately upon getting out of the box for a tripping minor, Brown had a solo breakaway, but McNaughton closed the door, and the Badgers took the puck back down the ice where senior defender Laila Edwards weaved around a St. Thomas backchecker before lighting the lamp with a shot above Minotti’s right shoulder.
Six minutes into the third frame, senior forward Marianne Picard turned the puck over and Teagan Kulenkamp tied the game up, sneaking a shot around McNaughton’s outstretched left pad.
With 9:06 left, St. Thomas forward Rylee Bartz was assessed a tripping penalty, and after it ended, the Tommies, for the second time, got a chance off a penalty expiring. This time, they’d capitalize, with Bartz’s offering just barely trickling into the net to give the Tommies a lead.
With 1:26 left, Harvey, no stranger to big moments, threw the puck towards the net which bounced off of the stick of Kirsten Simms, also no stranger to big moments, to tie the game up once more.
That assist was Harvey’s 167th career point, tying the WCHA record for points from a defender.
The game’s drama reached critical mass when, with less than a second left, Simms threw the puck at the net, bouncing it off of Minotti’s back and into the twine.
However, the puck crossed the line mere milliseconds after time expired, sending the game to overtime where Cassie Hall, once more, no stranger to big moments, buried the puck into the back of the net to send the crowd home happy.
For Hall, that goal came down to her positioning. After the game, she said, “I had a feeling the puck was gonna end up there…whether it was a pass or a bounce, but luckily I was in that right place.”
Next week, the Badgers head south to join Mercyhurst and Stonehill in the SMASHVILLE Women’s Collegiate Hockey Showcase on November 29th and 30th.
