Having captured the WCHA regular-season and tournament titles, Wisconsin now has its eyes on a much bigger prize: a national championship.
The Badgers (24-3-1 WCHA, 34-3-1 overall) wrapped up the WCHA playoffs, as well as the No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament, last weekend in Minneapolis. Wisconsin will host CHA champion Mercyhurst (14-3-3 CHA, 19-10-5 overall) at LaBahn Arena Saturday at 7 p.m. in the NCAA quarterfinal. Tickets for the matchup sold out in less than 24 hours, marking the 12th sellout this season, a program record.
The Badgers seemed pleased with receiving the No. 2 seed and with playing in Madison, but remain focused on the task at hand.
“It’s definitely important but we're going to move on. We have an important game this weekend against Mercyhurst,” said Ann-Renée Debiens, the UW’s record-setting junior goaltender. “If we move on to the Frozen Four having the last change and all of that can be really important too.”
The Badgers, having not played Mercyhurst since 2012, have little-to-no familiarity with the upcoming opponent but draw confidence from their own successes so far this season.
“I’ve never seen them play, but I think that we can focus on what we’re doing well and make sure that they have to adjust to us,” Desbiens said. “If we do what we have been doing the entire season I think they are going to be struggling to keep up with us, so we need to stay focused on that.”
Wisconsin’s leading scorer, junior forward Sarah Nurse, concurred with her goaltender’s thoughts about their team’s keys to success.
“We’ve been successful all season,” Nurse said. “We’ve been working hard, we’ve been doing the little things right and I think as long as we focus on our gameplan I think we’ll be a very good team this weekend.”
The Badgers have found repeated success versus Mercyhurst in their limited matchups and have an 8-0-0 record versus the CHA champ to prove it. Three of the eight victories came in NCAA Tournament play. However, the last time these two champs squared off, Mercyhurst pushed Wisconsin late into the contest until a shorthanded goal in the third period proved to seal the deal.
The two respective leagues the teams hail from are hard to compare and are perhaps one of the many reasons programs like Wisconsin are so successful versus programs like Mercyhurst. The WCHA represents 4/10 of the top ten teams in the nation according to the USCHO.com poll. Meanwhile, the CHA has none, with the Lakers — the conference’s top representative — sitting outside the top 10 but leading unranked teams with seven registered votes.
Desbiens sees the competitive nature of the WCHA as an advantage, versus something that can wear her team down.
“I think we are definitely well prepared. We are in the league that gets the best preparation,” Desbiens said. “We play against a lot of very good teams and a lot of times too. Moving forward we have the advantage of being used to those tight games.”
In addition to the speed Wisconsin has, partially due to the league in which it plays, it also has one of the most intimidating home rinks in the nation, something Mercyhurst will undoubtedly notice immediately.
“Out in the east they don’t get as many fans as we do here so I think they are going to come out and see 1,500 fans in warm-ups and that’s going to get to them real fast,” Nurse said.
In the 20 home games the Badgers have had this season, they have averaged 2,006 fans per contest. When you contrast those numbers with the 522 fans per home game that the Lakers are used to, you really start to get an idea of how different this experience will be for the visiting team.
“We were talking about it with the assistant coach on the ice and she was like ‘Yeah they are not going to be used to this,’ and I feel like none of them have played in front of a crowd like this,” Desbiens said. “They are probably going to be intimidated. We need to use that to our advantage at the beginning of the game.”
Though the Badgers are entering the weekend confident and with their home crowd behind them, they are well aware of the dangers that one-and-done scenarios can present to even the best of teams.
“We have been taking it just one game at a time,” Nurse said. “As soon as we come into playoffs its been kind of one-and-done for us so I think we just need to keep taking it one game at a time and not look too far ahead.”
The winner of the matchup will advance to the NCAA Frozen Four in Durham, N.H., which will be held March 18-20.
