Wisconsin scored four second-period goals to take command in its 5-0 victory over Minnesota-Duluth in the WCHA Final Face-Off.<\/p>\n
“Certainly pleased with our effort this afternoon, especially the second period,” coach Mark Johnson said.<\/p>\n
The Badgers (33-3-1) kept the puck in the attacking zone for much of the middle frame, and pulled away with three goals in the final six minutes to take a five-goal lead into the second intermission.<\/p>\n
“Courtney [Burke’s] goal to start the period off under a minute put Duluth maybe a little on their heels, and then we just built off that and played very well,” Johnson said.<\/p>\n
Ann-Renee Desbiens made 17 saves to up her NCAA record for shutouts in a season to 19.<\/p>\n
“It’s not something you think about,” Desbiens said. “It just happens, and it just shows how consistent we’ve been since the beginning of the season.”<\/p>\n
Mikaela Gardner, Annie Pankowski, Kim Drake, and Sarah Nurse also scored for the Badgers. Sophia Shaver, with two assists, had the only multipoint game.<\/p>\n
“As a forward, it’s really nice to have the depth that we do,” Pankowski said. “There’s a lot of confidence in each other, and knowing that whoever is on the ice can put the puck in the net. There’s a lot of momentum that can come from that, too.”<\/p>\n
Minnesota-Duluth (15-21-1) sees its first season under coach Maura Crowell come to an end.<\/p>\n
“Tough way to end the season, but Wisconsin is clearly a very talented team,” Crowell said.<\/p>\n
The Badgers were able to exert their will as the game went along.<\/p>\n
“They’re fantastic at just cycling and using their D, and their D come down the wall and they just possess really nicely,” Crowell said.<\/p>\n
UMD’s quarterfinal series provides a bright spot to punctuate its season.<\/p>\n
“That was a great weekend for us,” Crowell said. “Going into Friday night’s game, our mentality was, this is a new season. As an underdog, I think people really get excited about that, because whether you had enough wins throughout the season, you can reset the batteries, and start focusing, and everybody is 0-0 again. I think that really fired up our players.”<\/p>\n
Wisconsin knows that it will be a top-three seed in the NCAA tournament no matter what happens in Sunday’s final, but the Badgers aren’t worried about that right now.<\/p>\n
“You don’t often get a lot of chances to play for a trophy,” Johnson said. “Tomorrow, we play for another trophy so we’re excited about that opportunity.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wisconsin scored four second-period goals to take command in its 5-0 victory over Minnesota-Duluth in the WCHA Final Face-Off. “Certainly pleased with our effort this afternoon, especially the second period,” coach Mark Johnson said. The Badgers (33-3-1) kept the puck in the attacking zone for much of the middle frame, and pulled away with three […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":22374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22094"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22094"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22095,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22094\/revisions\/22095"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22094"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=22094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}