The regular season is entering the final stretch for the No. 2 Wisconsin Badgers (20-1-1 WCHA, 26-1-1 overall), with only three series left to play before the start of the WCHA playoffs.
The team has yet to drop any points since returning from winter break, winning eight straight games, most recently a series sweep over the St. Cloud State Huskies last weekend.
Wisconsin won both games 3-0, a satisfying result for most programs, but not necessarily for head coach Mark Johnson and this Badger team. Johnson wasn’t happy with how everything played out on Saturday, but was pleased with the adjustment the team was able to make for Sunday’s game.
“I thought our weekend obviously was good,” Johnson said. “I think some of the things that happened within our game Saturday with a 1-0 lead and some the mistakes that happened within that game, we talked about after [the game]...and some of the things we learned and talked about we did a much better job of on Sunday.”
This weekend the Cardinal and White hit the road, traveling to Columbus, Ohio to take on the Ohio State Buckeyes (5-16-1, 9-18-1).
Ohio State was on the receiving end of an early season demolition at the hands of the Badgers, as it was outscored 15-0 over Wisconsin’s two-game sweep at LaBahn Arena back in October.
But playing a team at the end of the season can be a completely different challenge than the first time around, something Johnson touched on at a press conference Monday.
“I think anyone can attest, whether it’s in hockey or some other sport, you get in the second half of your season and you start playing an opponent the second time and the third time and the fourth time, things get more challenging,” Johnson explained. “You really have to be on your ‘A’ game if you are going to get an opportunity to be successful.”
Playing a team second-to-last in the standings like Ohio State, coupled with the fact that the playoffs begin in only a few weeks, could make it easy for the Badgers to look past this weekend’s series before it even happens. However, junior goalie Ann-Renée Desbiens described why Wisconsin needs to take this matchup seriously.
“I think we saw this past weekend, St. Cloud wasn’t as good as our past opponents and they still came up pretty big here,” Desbiens said. “I think that will be the case when we play against Ohio [State], they are going to make adjustments, they know what we do. So it’s not going to be easy and I feel every single game brings a different challenge that you can learn from.”
Ohio State has given up the most goals in the conference with 107, and with the Badgers finding goals a little harder to come by in the latest stretch of the season, this series presents an opportunity to get the offense firing on all cylinders again. However, senior forward Rachel Jones says the team isn’t looking at this series any differently, and they intend to stick to the game plan that has worked throughout the whole season, starting with getting the offense flowing.
“We look at every weekend for that, but every game is a different game, [Ohio State] is a team that’s going to come out and battle, and we are away so they’re obviously going to have the energy in the building, but I think just trying to get the puck going and sticking to what we’ve been doing all season and hopefully we’ll get a couple more wins.”
One part of this matchup that will be different is the rink size. OSU’s Ice Rink is smaller than the common dimensions of college hockey rinks, such as LaBahn, and Johnson said it will take the team a little bit to adjust to the different style.
“We can practice and do some things, but it’s going to take probably the first six to eight minutes, a couple shifts with each line in that setting in the game Friday night for [the players] to understand what we’ve been talking about,” Johnson said. “Things are going to happen quicker, there’s not a lot of time or space. It’s more like ping-pong watching the puck go back and forth.”
Wisconsin only has the away series against Ohio State, a home series against Minnesota State and then it hits the road against Minnesota before the regular season wraps up. With only one loss and one tie to their name, and as leaders in multiple statistical categories, the Badgers don’t appear to have much room for improvement. But that isn’t the case in the eyes of senior captain Courtney Burke, who says the team always can improve.
“I think there’s always thing we can improve on,” Burke said. “I think we can still clean up our d-zone more, being able to break the puck out cleaner and getting the puck deep all the time, and just forechecking. But I think we are doing a really good job and it’s just the little things that we can get better at.”
The first game of the series will start at 6 p.m. Friday, while Saturday’s game will be at 3 p.m.
