Nearly everyone knows what Mark Johnson did on Feb. 22, 1980. With a pair of goals in an Olympic hockey game against the Soviet Union, Johnson took center stage in one of the most famous sporting events in history.
In his three years with Wisconsin, Mark Johnson racked up a program-record 125 goals through a combination of accurate shooting, elite skating, smart play with the puck and timely hockey instincts.
When athletic director Barry Alvarez hired Tony Granato to replace Mike Eaves as head coach of the Wisconsin men’s hockey team, the reception inside and outside the program was nearly unanimous: The Badgers had swung big, and got their guy.
As Wisconsin headed to East Lansing for its road test against Michigan State, the focus inside and outside of the locker room was on how the Badgers (5-6-5 Big Ten, 9-12-5 overall) would handle their second meeting with the Spartans (6-8-4, 10-13-5) elite top line without the ability to dictate line matchups.
At the start of head coach Tony Granato’s tenure, Wisconsin went into opposing teams’ buildings and played like they had slept the night in their own beds. The Badgers went 14-13-1 away from Madison in the first two years under Granato — better than their 15-18-4 record in the Kohl Center — despite traveling to some of the toughest road environments in college hockey.
Twice on Friday night Wisconsin fell behind against against Notre Dame, and twice it came charging back. After Will Johnson poked in a rebound of his own shot with 12 minutes left in regulation to tie the game at four goals a side, it looked like the Badgers had managed to grab at least a tie from the jaws of defeat.
Even Wisconsin’s (4-3-3 Big Ten, 8-9-3 overall) magic on Saturday night couldn’t save them from losing another tough game to No. 8 Denver (4-4-0 NCHC, 12-4-2 overall).
At least Wisconsin has hockey, right? After a disappointing day from both men’s basketball and volleyball, both the men's and women’s hockey teams came out of the day with dominant victories.
For the second time in two games, Wisconsin jumped out to a big lead early in the second period, before letting its opponent roar back into the game. And for the second time in two games, the Badgers clamped down defensively in the final period and got some clutch scoring to turn a would-be nailbiter into an ultimately comfortable win.
In the two-plus seasons since head coach Tony Granato took the program’s reins, Wisconsin’s men’s hockey team has been defined as much by the depth of its lows as by the height of its highs. The Badgers have claimed a win over the country’s top team and suffered an embarrassing home loss against one of the worst. Last season, they were the only team in the Big Ten to beat all six of the conference’s other teams, but also suffered a loss against all six as well.
“The great teams are the teams that when the game is on the line, you figure out how to turn it into a W,” head coach Tony Granato had said the night before. It wasn’t always pretty, it didn’t always look likely, but in the end Wisconsin came away with a win for the first time in six games, and did so in dramatic, roller-coaster fashion.
Officially, it’ll go down as a tie. The unranked Wisconsin Badgers (1-3-3 Big Ten, 5-7-3 overall) matched up against the No. 6 Penn State Nittany Lions (2-2-1, 10-3-1) Friday night, and after three periods and an overtime session the official score ended in a 3-3 tie.
According to the official record, Saturday night’s game winner came 10 minutes and 20 seconds into the third period, when sophomore defenseman Josh Ess ripped a shot from the left point over Minnesota goaltender Eric Schierhorn’s shoulder to put Wisconsin up 2-1. Ess’s shot was nearly perfect, and it did provide the the winning margin, but the real game-changing moment came 40 minutes earlier, when the Badgers bounced back from an early goal on a five-minute penalty kill and locked down the Minnesota offense.
Everything was going well for the Badgers. Until it went really, really bad. The No. 20 Wisconsin Badgers (0-1-0 Big Ten, 4-5-0 overall) were cruising, up two goals to none on the No. 16 Minnesota Golden Gophers (1-0-0, 2-4-0) midway through the second period when all hell broke loose on the ice.
Wisconsin’s opening-night shutout win over then No. 10 Boston College caught the attention of the college hockey community and signalled that the Badgers had the talent to exceed expectations in 2018-’19. But given the program’s recent history, what they did the next night seemed even more significant.
In December 2011, Tony Granato received a phone call. An old friend from college had gotten a new job and was moving into town, and Granato was supposed to help him find a place to live. It was a normal story, except for a few details; Granato was an assistant coach for the NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins and his old friend was Paul Chryst, who had just been named the newest head football coach at Pittsburgh.
The No. 16 Wisconsin Badgers (0-0-0 Big Ten, 4-4-0 overall) dropped both games of their weekend set to the No. 14 North Dakota Fighting Hawks (0-0-0 NCHC, 4-2-1 overall). Friday’s contest ended in a 5-0 blowout in favor of the Fighting Hawks, and Saturday night’s contest ended just seconds into overtime as Jacob Bernard-Docker found the back of the net for North Dakota, giving it a 3-2 win.
Five-on-five, Wisconsin played well enough. It battled for loose pucks, tracked back to shut down odd-man rushes and got traffic in front of the net to disrupt the opposing goaltender’s eyes and rhythm. The Badgers allowed a goal, but they scored one, too. It wasn’t a stellar performance, but it was good enough to have a chance at a win.
By numbers alone, Wisconsin’s men’s hockey team was always going to be reliant on its underclassmen this year.
As a freshman, it took Sean Dhooghe 22 games and three months to score four goals for the UW men's hockey team. On the first road trip of his sophomore year, it took him just five and a half periods.
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