ST. PAUL, Minn. — The teams might have ended the season series with a split, but Wisconsin won the game that mattered most.

St. Cloud State owned a three games to two edge over UW after a WCHA Final Five semifinal win back on March 19th, but with a trip to the Frozen Four on the line, the Badgers took a commanding lead and didn’t look back in the 5-3 win.

Freshman goaltender Mike Lee was the main nemesis in two of the SCSU wins, making 38 saves in a 4-1 Husky win in St. Cloud in November and blanking the Badgers for just the second time in UW’s season at the Final Five.

Lee’s weakness however, was youthful inconsistency. The day after turning aside 37 Wisconsin shots in that semifinal, he allowed four goals in just 26:05 of play, being pulled in favor of Junior Dan Dunn in an eventual 3-5 loss to WCHA tournament champion North Dakota.

It was a similar story in the West Regional final, as it took just 15:21 of play for John Mitchell, Blake Geoffrion and Jake Gardiner to put pucks in the net for Wisconsin. That spelled the end of Lee’s night and essentially, the end of St. Cloud State’s NCAA tournament run.

Lee made just eight saves after facing 11 shots.

The twist in this game was Wisconsin’s ability to get shots on net and skaters in front to screen and create rebounds.

“I think with all young goaltenders that are played very well, the message to your team is that you need to get pucks and bodies to the net and then make him make saves,” UW head coach Mike Eaves said. “Early in the game we were able to get pucks that he did not control very well. We were able to get the rebounds and that is the simple truth.”

Mitchell’s willingness to crash the net resulted in his two goals, as he poked a puck shot in by Andy Bohmbach past Lee to open the scoring.

Rebounds took care of the rest of the first period’s scoring, as both Geoffrion’s and Gardiner’s goals were the result of rebounds.

“[Lee] shutout Wisconsin last week but we were flat, the first period was a real struggle for us and we felt it on the bench and our guys felt it,” SCSU head coach Bob Motzko said.

The win helped take some of the sting away from the Badgers’ previous losses to the Huskies.

“A lot of it was redemption. We just played them and we didn’t perform the way we wanted to,” junior tri-captain Ryan McDonagh said.

Hobey Baker notes as of April 4th

Geoffrion was named to the all-tournament team for the West Regional, as well as being voted the weekend’s MVP. The senior tri-captain had two goals and three assists in the two regional games.

Additionally, it was announced March 31 that Geoffrion made the Hobey Hat Trick, meaning he is one of the three finalists for the Hobey Baker Award, the college hockey equivalent of the Heisman. Geoffrion is joined by New Hampshire’s Bobby Butler and Maine’s Gustav Nyquist.

Butler led the nation with 29 goals on the season, while Nyquist was the top overall scorer, with 19 goals and 42 assists.

In comparison, Geoffrion is second in goals (27), and is tied for first in the nation in power play goals (14). Additionally, he’s one of the Badgers’ top penalty killers and face-off men.

The Brentwood, Tenn. native wasn’t the only Badger to be one of the top-10 finalists for the award. Teammate Brendan Smith was included as a finalist, but wasn’t one of the top three vote-getters in the final tally.

Smith certainly had a case to be included in the Hat Trick, as he’s the nation’s highest-scoring defenseman (15-32-47). He’s tied for sixth in the nation in power play goals with 11, notably getting the game-tying and game-winning goals in the Camp Randall Hockey Classic back in February.

Interestingly, Wisconsin has six more national titles than Hobey winners. No Badger has ever won the prestigious award, with Steve Reinprecht’s runner-up finish in 2000 being the closest Wisconsin has come. Carolina Hurricanes defenseman Jamie McBain was a top-10 finalist last season for UW and current Ottawa Senators goaltender Brian Elliot was named to the Hat Trick in 2006, the year of Wisconsin’s most recent national title.

The winner of the Hobey Baker Award will be announced Friday night.