All things considered, 2011-’12 was a forgettable season for the Wisconsin men’s hockey team.
The Badgers stumbled to a mediocre at best overall record of 17-18-2—failing to reach the 20-win mark for only the third time under head coach Mike Eaves—and never seemed to find their stride in WCHA play, finishing near the conference cellar in 10th place with a 11-15-2 conference mark, and for the second year in a row Wisconsin was bounced out of the WCHA playoffs in the first round.
People will point to the Badgers’ extreme youth this season as the biggest reason for their up and down season. Wisconsin’s 26-man roster was composed of 20 underclassmen—including nine freshmen—meaning the Badgers were giving a lot of ice time to a number of players still adjusting to the pace of play of college hockey.
Navigating the waters of a season in the WCHA—arguably the nation’s toughest conference—is hard enough for a veteran team, let alone a group like Wisconsin, for which every week brought a new challenge or learning experience in a season-long trial by fire.
The Badgers soon realized that the WCHA learning curve was steep, stumbling to a 7-14-2 record in their first 23 conference games, which included a 1-8-1 mark on the road. The worst stretch for UW came from Jan. 27 to Feb. 17 when the Badgers lost five straight games in conference play.
But, down the stretch of the season something clicked for Wisconsin. The team played its best hockey of the year at the end of the regular season, going on a season-high four game winning streak and winning four of its final five games overall—which included three wins on the road—showing just how much the Badgers had grown and matured over the course of the season, but that run of momentum came to an abrupt halt in the first round of the WCHA playoffs.
After Sunday’s season ending loss to Denver in the postseason, Eaves evoked Packers legendary head coach Vince Lombardi when reflecting on his team’s 2011-’12 campaign. Once after a loss Lombardi was quoted as saying, “We didn’t lose the game; we just ran out of time,” and for Eaves that is a perfect metaphor for the Badgers’ season.
“I feel that way about this season with the way our kids are playing,” Eaves said. “We ran out of games this year. We really came into our own in the second half and saw growth.”
Wisconsin junior defenseman Justin Schultz agreed with his coach’s sentiments, and believes that the Badgers showed towards the end of the season that they have the talent to be among the nation’s best teams.
“If you look at where we’ve come from from the beginning of the year, we’ve come miles,” Schultz said Sunday. “If we did have a couple more games we’d be a dominating force. I still think we could compete with any team in [the WCHA] and across the country.”
Wisconsin gave us a glimpse of the potential it has moving forward in the season’s final weeks. Sitting near the bottom of the standings with only a few weeks left in the season, it would have been easy for a group of young players like the Badgers to hang their heads and mail it in from there on out, but they didn’t. They played their best hockey to date and put together the most complete set of games it played all year, including dominating wins over Denver and Minnesota—two of the nation’s elite teams.
It would seem moving forward that the Badgers have all the pieces in place. They have a goaltender in freshman Joel Rumpel who proved down the stretch that he is more than capable of shouldering the load between the pipes and standing on his head at times should he need to. They have an array of talented young forwards led by a superstar in the making, sophomore Mark Zengerle and freshman such as Joseph LaBate, Brendan Woods and Brad Navin. They have a defense core that, even with the expected loss of Schultz this summer to the professional ranks, should be heavy on young talent such as freshman Jake McCabe and sophomores Frankie Simonelli and Joe Faust.
Wisconsin has a young, talented core in place. This season the Badgers youth was their Achilles heel at times; next year it will be their strength. Accounting for the anticipated loss of Schultz, Wisconsin’s roster will be composed of 19 players who next year will be sophomores and juniors, who will then be equipped with at least one season of college hockey and WCHA experience. That group will have been through the fire together and grown together, establishing a solid core with which to build towards the future.
As Woods told me last week, “We’re going to be a pretty good-looking team.”
Maybe this was the plan all along. Maybe the Badgers knew that a couple of rebuilding years was necessary knowing that they were building towards something greater. At the end of the regular season you could see everything finally coming together for Wisconsin, the team’s increased confidence was apparent and one thing became clear: the future is bright in Madison.
Do you think the Badgers have what it takes to become one of the WCHA’s best? Let Ryan know what you think of the future of Wisconsin hockey by e-mailing him at rmevans2@dailycardinal.com or hitting him up on Twitter @ryanmevans.
