After dropping Friday night’s season opener to visiting North Dakota, Wisconsin women’s hockey coach Tracey DeKeyser seemed surprisingly upbeat for an interim head coach who had just lost her first game.
DeKeyser inherited a talented team, but an inexperienced one. With seven freshmen seeing regular ice time, DeKeyser stressed patience to her players as they attempted to reconcile Friday’s offensive futility with a more productive Saturday.
“[You have to] just encourage them (that) they’re doing the right things for the most part,” DeKeyser said following Friday’s 2-0 loss to North Dakota. “Come back and keep knocking at that door.”
Interestingly enough, it was the UW freshmen who most tangibly heeded DeKeyser’s shrewd advice, as the young Badgers carried much of the load on Saturday. Freshman forward Brianna Decker netted a pair of goals, and her classmate Lauren Unser also found the net in Saturday’s win, while goalie Becca Ruegsegger complemented Decker and Unser’s contributions with a shutout in her first career start.
Decker, who came into the weekend as the WCHA preseason freshman of the year, found herself on a line with senior captain Jasmine Giles and sophomore forward Brooke Ammerman. As the Badgers’ top line, the trio is expected, naturally, to harvest a heavy proportion of the team’s offensive production.
Friday’s game saw this line control the puck with surprising ease, considering the serious lack of time to gel as a unit, but dominating puck possession and countless chances yielded no results as the Badgers were held scoreless. Following Friday’s defeat, Decker insisted that persistent pressure should cure their offensive woes.
“Yeah, hopefully we can put (one) in [Saturday],” Decker said following her first game as a Badger. “We had a lot of opportunity, and I think if we continue to work together as a line, the puck will find its way into the net.”
Decker was the one to break through for the Wisconsin offense when she rifled a Giles rebound over UND keeper Jorid Dagfinrud’s glove for a 1-0 Wisconsin lead late in the first period. DeKeyser said the goal was nothing new from the Dousman, Wis., native.
“That’s what Decker can do,” DeKeyser said. “She’s pretty nifty — she’s got great moves and great lateral abilities.”
Decker also added a second goal, the game’s final tally, halfway through the second period. Grabbing a pass from Giles at the red line, Decker infiltrated the UND zone and overwhelmed the defense with a pair of moves before beating Dagfinrud with a backhand.
Unfortunately for Wisconsin, however, Decker’s acrobatic goal resulted in her crashing into the net following her goal, and she was forced to leave the game with an undisclosed injury.
Freshman winger Unser doubled the Wisconsin advantage early in the second period when she was able to maintain her composure despite a flurry of aggressive Sioux defenders to bury a goal in just her second shift as a Badger. Unser said after the game her freshman classmates are an ambitious group, with hopes of repeating the success of previous teams.
“Our group of freshman is really a fun group, and we all get along really well,” Unser said. “The chemistry is already coming, and as we get older and play more games it will just get better and better from there.”
Ruegsegger also had a solid game between the pipes, denying all eight of North Dakota’s shots on goal. Ruegsegger did not, however, let a noticeable lack of shots prevent her from being in on the action.
The Colorado native and graduate of hockey factory Shattuck-St. Mary’s, used her uniquely aggressive style to influence the game, even when pucks were not coming to her net.
“You may have noticed that she likes to play the puck out of the net. In practice she is very aggressive outside out of the net,” DeKeyser said. “She had some great headman passes on their line changes, and that really caught them off guard.”
