Wisconsin men’s hockey: UW suffers first defeat of the season against Michigan

The No. 14 Wisconsin Badgers (2-1-0, 2-1-0-0 Big Ten) men’s hockey team opened up their home portion of the 2020-21 season on Thursday night at LaBahn Arena against the No. 6 Michigan Wolverines (3-0-0, 1-0-0-0 Big Ten) and suffered a 5-2 defeat, their first loss of the season.

The Badgers opened up the scoring in the first period with a snipe from the point by senior Josh Ess on assists by seniors Ty Pelton-Byce and Linus Weissbach. Despite being outshot 10-5, the Badgers went into the first intermission with the lead.

The second period was the polar opposite of the first. The Badgers had 18 shots on goal to Michigan’s 14, however the Wolverines had three pucks find the back of the net, including the third one with only 3.2 seconds left on the clock. The Badgers weren’t about to give up, however, and Weissbach scored on the power play, from a nice Cole Caufield pass, to make it a one goal game.

Michigan scored on the power play late in the third period, to make it 4-2, and then added an empty netter to reach the final score of 5-2. Badgers goalie Robbie Beydoun, the reigning Big Ten second star of the week, had 29 saves on the evening.

Here are some game notes from UW:

• Senior Linus Weissbach had his second multi-point game of the season with a goal and assist.
• Wisconsin’s power play is 3-for-9 (33.3 percent) while its penalty kill sits at 5-for-8 (62.5 percent).
• Senior Ty Pelton-Byce earned his third point of the season.

Wisconsin is back on the ice Friday night at 6 p.m. CT against Michigan. The game airs live on Fox Sports Wisconsin and 1310 WIBA, and streams at BTN+.