According to the official record, Saturday night’s game winner came 10 minutes and 20 seconds into the third period, when sophomore defenseman Josh Ess ripped a shot from the left point over Minnesota goaltender Eric Schierhorn’s shoulder to put Wisconsin up 2-1.
Ess’s shot was nearly perfect, and it did provide the the winning margin, but the real game-changing moment came 40 minutes earlier, when the Badgers bounced back from an early goal on a five-minute penalty kill and locked down the Minnesota offense.
Down a man — freshman center Dominick Mersch, who was sent off for a check from behind — and a goal, the No. 20 Badgers (1-1-0 Big Ten, 5-5-0 overall) bounced back in a situation where they could’ve wilted and put together their best defensive performance of the season to take down No. 16 Minnesota (1-1-0, 2-4-1) by a final score of 3-1.
The response started on the penalty kill, where Wisconsin still faced four minutes and 17 seconds of Minnesota’s potent power play. But despite their tired legs, the Badgers clamped down and didn’t allow another shot.
Freshman forward Roman Ahcan made a clearance near the midway mark of the power play, just as it looked like the penalty killing unit might break down under the sustained pressure. When former Wisconsin recruit Sampo Ranta’s shot bounced off the endboards and out of the zone, the Badgers had done their heaviest lifting of the night and stopped the bleeding.
“It’s big momentum for us,” Ess said. “Those were two big hits by [Mersch] and it kind of fired us up.”
Wisconsin got a power play of its own shortly after the major expired, and playing four-on-three with wide open ice, sophomore defenseman Wyatt Kalynuk teed up a shot that sophomore forward Sean Dhooghe tipped into the net to tie the game.
“The next four minutes of the penalty kill was outstanding,” head coach Tony Granato said. “The specialty teams in the first, to come out of that 1-1 was I think a big lift to our team.”
From there, it was the defense’s time to shine. Freshman goaltender Daniel Lebedeff made 23 consecutive saves and navigated nearly endless traffic around the net to stop the Gophers’ second and third chances.
“Daniel played really well today, he made a bunch of huge saves for us,” senior captain Peter Tischke said.
The blue-liners got in on the act too, with another 27 Minnesota shots stopped by Wisconsin skaters, including six by Tischke.
The senior defenseman’s biggest stop came during a second period penalty kill, when he put his face in front of a loose puck in the crease to keep the score tied.
“He is the catalyst back there and that is his M.O., finding a way to get in front of pucks,” Granato said. “I thought the whole defensive group did a great job of being selfless and being in the way.”
In a game defined by squandered opportunities for both teams — shots off posts, empty nets missed, rebounds squirted just wide of attacking sticks — Ess’s game winner came in the simplest way possible: hard and high in the corner, exploiting a minor piece of bad positioning by Schierhorn.
“That was one of my five attempts at the point so I finally snuck one through,” Ess said. “He was a little bit off-angle coming out at me and I just snuck it through.”
The goal seemed to energize the Badgers, and they controlled play for most of the final nine minutes before a final flurry from Minnesota with the net empty. But Lebedeff made every save until the end, and freshman forward Jack Gorniak put a puck on the net in the closing seconds to secure his first career goal and seal the win.
