While Wisconsin women's hockey head coach Mark Johnson came out with a win for his Badgers to add to their undefeated season on Friday night, his son Patrick Johnson ended the game with a loss as the temporary equipment manager for the Tigers this weekend.
“I think he did a pretty good job for them,” the senior Johnson said. “But he didn’t look very good in a Princeton shirt.”
After having former Badger and U.S.A. Olympic team captain Meghan Duggan drop the puck to start the game, the No. 2 Wisconsin Badgers (2-0-0 WCHA, 7-0-0 overall) came out tentatively against the Tigers (0-0-0 ECAC, 0-1-0) and seemed to miss the presence of senior forward Emily Clark.
“Clark adds a lot of energy,” junior forward Abby Roque said. “She’s fast, she’s gritty, she’s always on the puck. You don’t see her do many things wrong ever. Not having her on the ice, a lot of things have changed, but a lot of people also stepped up in her place.”
Playing in their first game of the season, the Tigers came out fast and furious. After a little more than four minutes, senior Princeton forward Karlie Lund shot and scored on a power play against the Badgers.
“It was their first game so I knew they were gonna be excited to play,” Mark Johnson said. “They played hard and they played well.”
The Badgers didn’t take long to respond after allowing the first goal. Freshman forward Sophie Shirley rose to the occasion and scored with assists from Roque and senior forward Sam Cogan with under 14 minutes left in the period.
“We trust each other, and we know where each other is going to be,” Roque said. “We have a lot of trust that whoever we’re passing to is going to get that puck, or going to make that pass. ”
The Badgers seized the momentum and scored again with just over 10 minutes left in the first; this time Roque with assists from Shirley and Cogan.
“It’s really easy when you have good people to play with,” Shirley said. “All of us as a line just wanted to get pucks in the net.”
Wisconsin scored again with two minutes and 45 seconds left in the first period, as senior forward Annie Pankowski set up junior Alexis Mauermann to spot the home team a 3-1 lead.
After two failed attempts to score on power plays and no goals in the second period, LaBahn Arena welcomed back the 2008-2009 Wisconsin women’s hockey team, one of the program’s four national championship-winning squads.
“We wanna follow in their footsteps,” Roque said. “We wanna win that national championship. Seeing them and having them come in to talk about it and wearing their rings really is an inspiration for us to see that we can be national champions as well.”
Although the Badgers went into the third period with a two-goal cushion, Tiger forward Carly Bullock quickly changed that by scoring six minutes into the final frame.
“When they got that second goal, that kinda made us kinda wake up a little bit,” Shirley said. “I think as a group, we wanted to get pucks deep. Once we started doing that, things fell into place and we were playing our own style. I think getting pucks in the net was our main focus for that second half of the third period.”
The second line again provided some breathing room when Cogan assisted Shirley again to get the puck in the net with 9:02 left in the third period to put the lead back at two goals.
“Shirley’s last goal was a classic example of how you want to score,” Mark Johnson said. “Cogan makes a nice pass, Shirley drives hard, gets her stick down and redirects it.”
While Princeton scored again with five minutes left, they couldn’t pull out a victory against Wisconsin.
The Badgers are off Saturday and the series resumes Sunday at noon at LaBahn Arena.
