Following an impressive home sweep of the Minnesota State Mavericks last week, No. 3 Wisconsin will embark on a four-game road trip, starting with a series against St. Cloud State this weekend.
The Badgers (9-2-1 WCHA, 11-2-1 overall) scored 16 times against the Mavericks, led by freshman Annie Pankowski’s four-goal performance in the series. For her efforts, Pankowski was named the WCHA Rookie of the Week, the second time this season that she has received this honor.
Pankowski was part of an all-freshman line, along with Emily Clark and Baylee Wellhausen, which found great success in UW’s two games with Minnesota State. In total, the line combined for 25 shots and nine points (five goals and four assists).
“[The success of the freshmen] was great to see,” said senior forward Katy Josephs. “The coaches have kind of been switching stuff up, trying to get all the lines producing, so the fact that they were able to put a lot of goals away was a big help.”
Wisconsin has historically dominated the Huskies (5-6-1, 2-3-1), having won 57 of the 66 meetings between the two teams. The Badgers currently own a 20-game winning streak against St. Cloud State, which is in its first season under head coach Eric Rud.
The Huskies are looking to get back on track after getting swept at home last weekend by Minnesota-Duluth.
“[St. Cloud State] lost two games last weekend at home,” said Wisconsin head coach Mark Johnson. “I’m sure they’ll practice hard this week and they’ll come out Friday afternoon with the attitude that they don’t want to lose again.”
This series will be the second week in a row that UW has faced an extremely physical opponent, as the Huskies and Mavericks average more penalty minutes per game than any other team in the country.
This trend continued last weekend, as Minnesota State was penalized a total of 10 times in the series.
The Badgers only converted on two of their 10 power play opportunities against the Mavericks, but those two goals did help them build a three-goal lead in the second game of the series.
“We were pretty good on the power play when we needed to be,” Johnson said. “If you’re not going to score, at least create opportunities and you can change the momentum and create some energy from the power play.”
As evidenced by its back-to-back eight-goal performances last week, Wisconsin has been stellar on offense this year, ranking second in the nation with 4.29 goals per game.
Senior forward Blayre Turnbull will be a game-time decision after leaving last Friday’s game with a head injury, but the Badgers still will have seven different players with at least five goals scored at their disposal.
“You try to emulate within the game how you practice,” Johnson said. “The last couple weekends, we’ve tried to focus on getting pucks in the net, getting pucks to the net, creating rebounds and pouncing on that.”
The series gets underway Friday at 3 p.m. at the Herb Brooks National Hockey Center, followed by another 3 p.m. game Saturday.
