With emotions running high in the last home game of the season for the Badger women’s hockey team, senior forward Jackie Friesen shined with a hat trick Saturday night in her last game at the Kohl Center as a Badger. With family members adorning the stands, the assistant captain helped the Badgers complete the series sweep of Ohio State with wins of 7-2 Saturday night and 6-3 Friday night as they clinched third place in the WCHA.
Head coach Mark Johnson started three defenders and two forwards in Saturday night’s contest in order to get all his seniors on the ice to begin the game. The seniors would quickly show the night was to be theirs. Starting things off for the Badgers, senior defender Nicole Uliasz took a pass from forward Sara Bauer, skated into the zone along the right side, moved around two defenders and slid the puck under the pads of Ohio State goalie Melissa Glaser. Friesen then got her night started by cleaning up the garbage in front of the net, notching her first goal with only four seconds remaining in the first period.
Friesen didn’t waste any time in the second period, when she scored her second goal just three-and-a-half minutes in. Forward Lindsay Macy got the play started with a nifty move on the defender just to Glaser’s left. Senior defender Carla MacLeod’s shot was denied by Glaser, but it drifted just far enough out for Friesen, coming off the bench, to plant a wrist shot in the wide-open net. Grace Hutchins made the score 4-0 with her first goal of the night, but Ohio State wouldn’t go quietly. OSU captain Meaghan Mulvaney scored with less than 30 seconds in the period, and the teams went to the locker room with the score 4-1.
The Buckeyes made it clear they weren’t sitting down for the Badgers just over a minute into the third period, when forward Mallory Peckels pounded a goal past Badger goalie Meghan Horras to cut the lead to two. But the Badgers quickly quelled any hope that OSU could muster after Peckels’ goal, as Friesen lit the lamp for the third time of the night, redirecting Uliasz’s shot from the point past Glaser’s outstretched arm. The Badgers had a chance just a couple minutes later, when Macy was awarded a penalty shot after getting hooked on a breakaway. Macy skated in, put one move on the goaltender and attempted to flip the puck under Glaser’s pads, but the Buckeye goalie was too quick, denying Macy.
Jinelle Zaugg and Sharon Cole managed to add goals of their own to eradicate any doubts about the eventual outcome of the game, and the Badgers wrapped up the victory on Senior Night with the score 7-2.
“Tonight, for the most part, we moved the puck well and we skated hard, and that’s what you look for,” said Johnson. “The minute you start getting complacent or you start thinking you’re pretty good, that’s our job to make sure that we hold people accountable and get their attention.”
Friday night’s match featured another runaway victory by the Badgers. Hutchins got things started with a goal off her own rebound, after a feed from behind the net from forward Nikki Burish. Two minutes later, however, OSU forward Jeni Creary tied things up with a power-play goal of her own. But the Badgers, hungry for revenge after Buckeye netminder Erika Vanderveer stopped 34 Wisconsin shots in a 3-1 Ohio State win the last time the two teams met, showed they would not be denied on this night and answered back with two goals before the first intermission. With a Buckeye in the box, Friesen rifled a shot toward Vanderveer, and Burish was there to put it in. Only 10 seconds later, Cyndy Kenyon skated in along the right boards and passed the puck to Zaugg, who streaked in on the left side of the net and knocked in the one-timer top shelf.
Zaugg quickly got her second goal of the night at the beginning of the second period. Carrying the puck into the zone on a breakaway, she took a shot just in front of the blue line that sailed over Vanderveer’s right shoulder, making the score 4-1. Hutchins made it a four-goal lead when she knocked in a rebound off a Burish shot. OSU quickly answered back with a Jody Heywood goal eerily similar to most of the Buckeye goals in the series, a puck that drifted free in front of the net and was tapped just underneath Horras’ pads.
Ohio State pulled within two goals just 34 seconds into the third stanza, and it looked like they might try to make a game of it, but a score by Cole almost halfway through the period put a damper on a Buckeye comeback, and the Badgers picked up the victory 6-3.
