CHICAGO—The Badgers seem to have found their hot streak in the coldest of environments.
As part of the highly anticipated Border Battle series, the men’s hockey team (10-7-7 WCHA, 13-10-7 overall) took its game outdoors to the shores of Lake Michigan in the windy city to play in the Hockey City Classic Sunday.
The No. 18 Badgers rode an explosive three-goal second period to a much-needed 3-2 victory over No. 2 Minnesota (12-6-4 WCHA, 20-6-4 overall) on choppy ice and frigid temperatures at Soldier Field in Chicago.
Head coach Mike Eaves said the experience surrounding the Classic was great, despite the adverse conditions.
“To have an event like this is an emotional energizer,” Eaves said after the game. “It’s not just another game in the second half of the season.”
Sunday’s win came on the heels of Friday night’s defeat at the hands of the Gophers at the Kohl Center, where Wisconsin couldn’t finish a third-period comeback highlighted by a final three-minute stand with its goalie pulled.
Fans showed up to the Kohl Center in droves Friday night, hitting a season-high for attendance with 13,611 present for the third meeting between the Badgers and the Gophers this year.
Intensity was high from the onset, as Wisconsin looked more like the team that played Minnesota in November than the team that played in a lackluster contest against Bemidji State a week ago.
Freshman forward Nic Kerdiles drew first blood after corralling a knee-high pass from junior forward Mark Zengerle, but the Badgers’ lead wouldn’t last for long.
Junior defenseman Frankie Simonelli picked up a holding penalty with 2:30 left in the first period, leaving Wisconsin a man down against Minnesota’s nationally fifth-ranked power play.
Minnesota’s sophomore forward Sam Warning caught a rebound off sophomore goaltender Joel Rumpel’s pad and fired it into the back of the net, tying the score at one with a minute left before the first intermission.
While the score may have been equal, the shots weren’t: After just one period the Gophers more than doubled Wisconsin’s shot count, with 20 to the Badgers’ 9.
A few questionable hits on both goalies punctuated the opening minutes of the second period, though Rumpel was able to hold off Minnesota’s vaunted scoring attack for the better part of 20 minutes.
Late in the period the Badgers got bottlenecked in their own zone for a long, hard-fought shift where sophomore forward Joseph LaBate accrued two subsequent penalties, giving the Gophers’ nation-leading offense a four-minute power play.
“We got caught in a long shift out there,” Eaves said. “We got tired, and when you get tired bad things happen.
Minnesota again struck gold with the man advantage when Nick Bjugstad sent a slapshot over the shoulder of Rumpel, putting Wisconsin down 2-1 heading into the final period.
According to Eaves, the shot might have hit sophomore defenseman Jake McCabe before it went in.
“That’s a goal scorer’s goal.” Eaves said. We get out there, we do the right things and it hits a piece of us, a piece of the crossbar and goes in.”
The penalty kill let the Badgers down again when senior captain and defenseman John Ramage was called for interference, leaving UW at the mercy of Minnesota’s power play.
Sophomore defenseman Jake McCabe was struck in the ankle by a shot halfway through the penalty and immediately collapsed, limping off the ice before the Gophers’ Seth Ambroz snuck another puck past a diving Rumpel, putting the score at 3-1 with 7 minutes left to play.
Pulling the goaltender with just under three minutes left in the game, the Badgers were able to hold the puck in Minnesota’s zone and junior forward Tyler Barnes cashed in on the opportunity with a rebound goal just a minute before time expired.
The comeback would never come to fruition, however, as time expired without another goal from Wisconsin, leaving the score standing at 3-2.
Eaves was quick to recognize that every mistake is magnified when playing the No. 2 team in the country.
“They’re all really good with the puck.” Eaves said. “They’re all like starting quarterbacks.”
After a day hiatus and a short bus trip to the windy city, UW would bear the cold at Soldier Field in an attempt to wash the bitter taste of Friday’s defeat out of their mouths.
The last time the Badgers played outdoors was in 2010 at Camp Randall, a game that Ramage was fortune enough to have played in, bringing some small measure of outdoor experience to Chicago.
“For our team, this year playing at Soldier Field against Minnesota, a big rival, I think this definitely overtakes [that game],” Ramage said.
Soft ice was the by-product of a relentless sun that shone down throughout the day, and head coach Mike Eaves was talking all day about not doing too much given the circumstances.
“The game was simplified for us and that plays to our hand better,” he said.
The third period was even split into two halves in which the teams switched sides, due to the choppy ice conditions.
After a slow start in which Rumpel made two early point-blank saves Wisconsin thought it had taken an early lead when LaBate slapped a pop-up out of the air and into the goal, but it was recalled after a referee’s review in which a high stick was retroactively called.
“We weren’t on our toes” Ramage said of the first period. “We wanted to start off the first period with getting a lot of shots and that’s something that we didn’t do.”
The opening period would end without any light in the lamps, but the second period was a completely different story following three Badger goals within four minutes of each other.
The first came with 6:55 left in the second period after sophomore forward Brendan Woods made a diving play to push the puck out to freshman defenseman Kevin Schulze, who was able to bury it in the back of the net, giving Wisconsin first blood for the second time in the weekend’s Border Battle series.
“Getting that goal seemed to give us confidence.” Eaves said of Schulze’s shot.
Ramage added a second goal one minute later when he bounced the puck off a Minnesota defender and past Gopher goaltender Adam Wilcox.
Following a sequence in which Rumpel lost his stick and continued after taking Kerdiles’, junior forward Sean Little knocked a rebounded shot home, giving the Badgers a 3-0 lead in the final period of the weekend.
With less than ten minutes left to play, Minnesota’s Seth Ambroz hammered a puck out from underneath Rumpel’s pad and into the net, finally putting the Gophers on the board.
With under two minutes remaining Minnesota’s call to pull its goalie paid off when Zach Budish ripped a shot from the point, bringing the Gophers within one, but the comeback would ultimately fall short in the same fashion as Friday’s.
Eaves compared both games, saying that Sunday’s contest was a “replica” of Friday’s game where time expired before Wisconsin could complete its comeback.
Rumpel sealed the victory with a diving, legs-extended skate save as time expired.
It looks like a little change of pace was all the Badgers needed.
