The Wisconsin men’s hockey team was unable to get off to the start in Big Ten play they were looking for, losing their conference opener Friday night to Penn State 5-2.

The Nittany Lions (8-4-2, 2-1-0 Big Ten) seemed to dominate the game from start to finish and outshot the Badgers (1-10-1, 0-1-0) in every period. The Nittany Lions ended up outshooting Wisconsin 40-24 overall and all three forwards on Penn State’s top line tallied a goal.

Wisconsin head coach Mike Eaves was unhappy after the game with the way his team played, considering the improvement the Badgers seemed to show last week against Ferris State.

“We had high expectations coming into this game tonight and we let a team come in and dictate,” Eaves said. “They outhustled us, they outmuscled us.”

The game was chippy throughout, as the Badgers and Nittany Lions frequently got into shoving matches after the whistle. The game’s physicality seemed to hurt the Badgers more than the Nittany Lions, however, as key penalties allowed Penn State to spend much of the game on a man advantage and establish a commanding control of the play.

Eight minutes into the first period, Badger forward Tim Davison went to the penalty box for roughing Penn State after defending goaltender Joel Rumpel when Penn State’s skaters crashed the net hard. That penalty allowed Penn State to jump out an early 1-0, as Nittany Lion forward David Goodwin put in a power play goal.

“I think that call in particular was inappropriate because of the fact that the kid lost his balance,” Eaves said of the roughing penalty on Davison. “Timmy was standing there and the kid lost his balance and fell and the referee interpreted that as roughing, so that was too bad.”

The misfortune continued for the Badgers three minutes later when Wisconsin defenseman Jack Dougherty whiffed on a puck, allowing Penn State forward James Robinson to skate in on a breakaway and put the Nittany Lions up 2-0.

After falling behind 2-0, Morgan Zulinick brought the Badgers within one going into the second period when he deflected in a Keegan Ford slap shot.

Despite his late first period goal, Zulinick said he and his teammates needed to get going earlier to avoid an early disadvantage.

“We can’t wait that long to get that goal,” Zulinick said. “We have to start right off the start and they came out harder from right off the bat.”

Rumpel, who had 35 saves on the night, said he expected the Badgers to come out of the gates faster after they had won their first game of the season a weekend before.

“We came out a little flat, which was unexpected,” Rumpel said. “I thought we were going to come out a lot stronger.”

Twenty seconds into the third period, the Badgers once again found themselves in a big disadvantage when Cameron Hughes was ejected from the game after receiving a 10-minute major and a game misconduct for checking from behind. The Nittany Lions converted on the long power play, giving them a decisive 4-1 lead.

Despite the ejection, Eaves felt that the play of Hughes was one of the bright spots for the Badgers Friday night.

“I really liked the way that Cameron Hughes played. It’s a shame he got the boot there,” Eaves said. “He was probably the most dynamic player we had out there, and we lost him.”

After a goal by Davison made it a two-goal game, Penn State would seal the deal with a late empty net tally, giving the Nittany Lions a 5-2 victory in game one of the weekend series.

Wisconsin will have a chance to redeem themselves tomorrow night when they host Penn State in a rematch, and Rumpel is expecting a much better performance from the Badgers Saturday night.

“You learn a lot more from losing than you do from winning,” Rumpel said. “We learned a lot tonight and tomorrow we’re obviously not going to come out as flat.”