Twice during a physical and occasionally chippy game, Wisconsin’s bench watched as one of their teammates was helped off the ice after a hard and questionably legal hit by a North Dakota player. Both times it was the cool hand of Sydney McKibbon that got the Badgers back on track.
The senior captain scored a pair of goals, one in the first period and another in the third, to help Wisconsin (17-2-1 WCHA, 22-2-1 overall) defeat the North Dakota Fighting Hawks (9-7-4, 12-9-5) 2-1 in the second game of the weekend series.
Saturday’s contest was marked by physical play that escalated toward the end of the game, and on Sunday the two teams started right where they had left off with an exchange of shoves between Wisconsin’s Emily Clark and UND’s Rebekah Kolstad in the first minute. Kolstad would play the role of instigator throughout the game, as she committed four penalties, including three in the first period.
“Any time we play North Dakota they give us a battle,” McKibbon said. “They’re a hard working team and they like to be hard on the puck so we expect that every time we play them.”
Kolstad’s second penalty drew particular attention from the fans at LaBahn Arena, as she delivered an elbow to the face of senior defender Mellissa Channell. Less than a minute after Channell was helped off the ice, McKibbon took a rebound from a shot by Jenny Ryan and banked it off North Dakota goalie Kristen Campbell to give the Badgers a 1-0 lead.
“One of our focuses was to drive the net,” McKibbon said. “They had a different goalie in today so we tried to pester her and get as many pucks to the net as we could.”
Despite a few quality scoring opportunities in the ensuing minutes, Wisconsin was unable to extend its lead, due in large part to a series of penalties that appeared to disrupt its offensive rhythm. Those penalties eventually caught up to the Badgers during their third penalty kill of the second period, as a flurry of quick passes on the power play lead to a shot from UND’s Emma Nuutinen that beat Wisconsin goaltender Ann-Renée Desbiens on her glove side.
Just over three minutes into the third period, with the teams still knotted at one goal apiece, junior Badger defender Lauren Williams got tangled with North Dakota’s Vilma Tanskanen and went crashing into the end boards. Unable to put any weight on her right leg, Williams was carried off the ice and would not return to the bench. A couple minutes later, McKibbon took advantage of Kolstad’s fourth penalty of the game, scoring on the power play to give Wisconsin a 2-1 lead that it would not relinquish.
As the final horn sounded, the Badgers gathered for their traditional center ice celebration, having escaped a closely-fought series with a pair of one-goal wins.
“It was a good character builder for us,” head coach Mark Johnson said. “It forced us to play hard, it forced us to compete and do a lot of things that in the second half of the season we haven’t had to do.”
