With 40 seconds remaining, and the Badgers down 2-0 against the top-ranked Gophers, Carla MacLeod wound up for a slap shot from the point that slipped past Minnesota goaltender Jody Horak. Seconds later, with Badgers goalie Meghan Horras on the bench, MacLeod took a wrist shot from the faceoff circle that once again found its way into the net, as MacLeod found herself at the bottom of a pile of ecstatic Badger hockey players.
The Badgers went on to lose the game in overtime when two penalties at the end of regulation put them in a 5-on-3 situation to start overtime, and Krissy Wendell took advantage just 19 seconds in.
But the Badgers have every reason to walk away from the tournament with their heads held high. They made the WCHA championship game for the first time since their 2001-2002 campaign, and they took the two best teams in the country to overtime, beating the Minnesota-Duluth Bulldogs 3-2 to go to the final. In doing so, the Badgers showed a character and resilience that makes this team different than any in the program’s past.
For the first time in the team’s history, Wisconsin won a game in which they trailed at the end of a period of play. Never have the Badgers gone to intermission with fewer goals than the opponent and come back to win the game, but they did so twice this weekend, against the No. 6-seeded St. Cloud State Huskies and against No. 2 Minnesota-Duluth. The Badgers came back to tie the game twice against the Bulldogs and eventually won it in overtime, giving UMD a taste of its own medicine. Earlier this year it was Duluth who came into Madison and came back from a 2-0 deficit with less than four minutes to go in the game to win it in overtime.
“It’s the resilience of the team,” head coach Mark Johnson said. “Those things are painful to go through, but on the positive end, you learn from it, you grow from it, and you become stronger because of it.”
Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise. After all, the Badgers returned strong junior and freshman classes to this year’s team. The senior class this year has been led by two-time WCHA Defensive Player of the Year Molly Engstrom and her defensive partner MacLeod. They and the other seniors were on the team that made it to the conference championship match in 2002, but this time around they have added experience and talent on their side.
Also benefiting from experience are this year’s sophomores. The talented freshman class of a year ago is now a year wiser and has proven to be a threat on offense. Wisconsin’s best-scoring line consisted of three second-year players — Sara Bauer, Lindsay Macy and Sharon Cole. In this case the sophomore slump did not apply, as the three have combined for 128 points this season.
“I like the way we’re playing,” Johnson said. “Even in a game today [against Minnesota] where we were a little bit tired, we played smart, we played intelligently, and we did the things necessary to give ourselves an opportunity.”
The Badgers showed their new sense of resiliency in their very first playoff game against the Huskies. The Badgers looked confused and flustered in the first two periods of play Friday night. Be it the small ice surface or the fact that they were seeing St. Cloud for the third time in less than a week, their offense was stagnant, they moved the puck like it was their first game of the season, and they were down 1-0 after two periods of play. But when Jinelle Zaugg scored just over two minutes into the third period, a gift from SCSU goalie Lauri St. Jacques, the Badgers’ spirits were lifted.
“Did you hear it?” asked MacLeod of the teams’ collective sigh of relief.
“We definitely needed that first goal, and just everything started going from there,” Zaugg said.
The Badgers took the lead on a Macy power play goal later that period and didn’t look back.
The Badgers bounced back similarly on Saturday against the Bulldogs. The Badger team that had won a team-record nine straight games going into the match showed up on this night, and from the start, UMD was getting all it could handle. But once again the Badgers found themselves in a hole after a Rachael Drazan goal made the score 1-0 at the end of one. It would have stayed that way too, but the Badgers wouldn’t hear it. Just 15 seconds into the second frame, forward Jackie Friesen scored a goal off the face-off to tie the game, and the Badgers continued to battle.
A Bulldog goal, less than three minutes later, made the score 2-1, but the Badgers would fight back once more, getting a goal from Heidi Kletzien to tie the game again before the second intermission.
Wisconsin would wait until overtime however to complete the comeback, and when Cole lit the lamp off a feed from Bauer, a new look came over the Badgers. This was no longer a team content with lurking in the shadows of the Gophers and Bulldogs in relative obscurity. This was also a team that would no longer wonder if it could play from behind.
“As a coach, as you prepare yourself for the NCAA tournament and get comfortable with the way things are going on the ice and off the ice,” Johnson said. “It’s going to be up to the players in what they want to do with it.”
