Leslie Jones loves the Olympic Badgers

Badger legend Hilary Knight scored the knock-out goal in Team USA women’s hockey’s semifinal victory over Finland on Monday. Better yet, Knight scored the goal against former Minnesota Golden Gopher Noora Räty, who caused Bucky all sorts of trouble a few years back.

Oh, and it gets even better. As Räty lay flabbergasted on the cold crease (immediately prior to the Knight goal), she received some stellar heckling from a new #OlympicBadger ally, Saturday Night Live comedian Leslie Jones. Get ready for some adult language, so put in your earbuds if you’re at work.

Jones provided a great deal of commentary, and she should get an overtime paycheck from NBC for her analysis.

I love the smiles on the USA players’ faces on this clip:

Of course, Team USA loves it, and it helped the Americans perform better on the ice, according to Knight.

Needless to say, it was a good KNIGHT for Team USA, Leslie Jones, and #OlympicBadgers. (Give me your best Knight puns in the comments).

So what’s next for Jones and Team USA? I’ve got some ideas:

1. Collaborate with Knight for a hilarious Red Bull or GoPro commercial
2. Get Jones on skates and practice with Team USA
3. Replace every single NBC women’s hockey color commentator with Leslie Jones

I cannot wait for Leslie Jones to cheer on Team USA Wednesday KNIGHT (10 p.m. CT) in the gold-medal match vs. Canada. Too bad she’ll have to shout across the globe, but I have a feeling it won’t be too big of a hurdle for Jones. Going to keep her pinned on Tweetdeck Wednesday for sure.

Other hockey notes:

• Interested in how the NCAA women’s hockey bracket could turn out? Check out Grant Salzano’s Pairwise Calculator at BC Interruption (Boston College’s SBN site). You’ll see what the possibilities are for the field of eight. I’ll analyze this more in the regular-season recap later this week.
• Sophia Shaver, a critical player for Wisconsin and a great facilitator, is out indefinitely with an upper-body injury. She was seen wearing a sling in the team’s post-game celebration and trophy ceremony. Mauermann’s status is unknown for the Final Faceoff in two weeks. The Badgers’ bye week will be critical to get used to the new lines and/or get healthy. However, I’m not confident that Shaver is going to compete again this season, as it looks like a collarbone injury.
• Former Badger and Canadian men’s hockey player Rene Bourque has been the top performing #OlympicBadger in this iteration of the Winter Games. He’s put up three goals so far in the games. Other goal scorers are Knight (one) for USA and Emily Clark (one) and Sarah Nurse (one) for Canada. Ann-Renée Desbiens shut out the Olympic Athletes from Russia last week, but hasn’t seen the ice since.