After posting their first series sweep in WCHA action this season, the UW men’s hockey team traveled to archrival Minnesota over the weekend with a little confidence. They returned with a lot of embarrassment.
Friday night, the Gophers (17-7-7, 12-5-5 WCHA) outshot the Badgers (10-19-3, 4-15-3) by a staggering total of 50-27. Despite outstanding play by goaltender Bernd Bruckler, Wisconsin still succumbed to the Gophers 5-2. Junior forward Jake Heisler notched his first goal of the year, and freshman defenseman Tom Gilbert scored his fifth for the Badgers.
As bad as Friday night was, Saturday night made it look like a championship performance, as Minnesota completely humiliated Wisconsin 8-1. Even the Minnesota fans seemed stunned by the dismal effort the Badgers put up in one of college hockey’s best rivalries.
It was clear from the opening minutes that the Badgers had little chance of winning. The Gophers thoroughly outskated the Badgers, creating open, cross-ice passing lanes whenever they wanted. It didn’t take long for Minnesota to translate its puck movement into goals; the Gophers scored 3:28 into the game on a power play.
Minnesota sophomore defenseman Keith Ballard, who had two goals in the game, launched his body parallel to the ice to knock down a UW clearing attempt and threw the puck in front of the net after getting back to his feet. UW goalie Scott Kabotoff was unable to control the rebound, and Minnesota junior forward Matt Koalska eventually buried the puck in the net for a 1-0 lead.
Ballard’s spectacular blue-line play deflated the Badgers, and the Gophers scored three goals in the next 5:15 on the struggling Kabotoff. The second of those three, however, was an easy tip-in by Grant Potulny, who skated right by a lazy Badger defender. All Kabotoff could do was watch as his plan for a solid first period, a period that has plagued him this season, went up in smoke.
“It never entered my mind to take [Kabotoff] out,” UW head coach Mike Eaves said. “We said, ‘Let him work through this,’ and hopefully just by playing he would get back in his groove.”
But he never really did. After freshman forward John Funk scored a power-play goal for the Badgers at 10:12 of the first period, an inexcusable too many men on the ice penalty against UW led to a power-play goal by Ballard and a 5-1 Minnesota lead.
And in the second period, the Gophers scored two goals that just compounded Wisconsin’s frustration. Sophomore forward Barry Tallackson made a spectacular move around UW defenseman Dan Boeser and beat Kabotoff over the left shoulder for Minnesota’s sixth goal. Freshman forward Thomas Vanek, the second-highest scoring freshman in the WCHA, beat an out-of-position Kabotoff to the puck in the corner and threw it out front for another Tallackson goal late in the period.
After another weekend of poor, uninspired hockey, Eaves remains frustrated with his team’s response to their bad situation.
“We have a group of guys that are pretty laid back as a group of people,” he said. “They’re not type A personalities. For them to step out of their comfort zone, it takes a big swift kick in the ass or something really huge to happen. We have too many guys like that.”
