Wisconsin hockey weekend recap

With the men’s hockey team off until the Kwik Trip Holiday Face-Off in Milwaukee on Dec. 28 and the women’s team off until a Jan. 1 series with Quinnipiac each squad got in one final series before the semester break started.

The men’s team hosted Penn State and left the weekend with a valuable split. On Friday night, the Badgers outshot the Nittany Lions after the first period and coasted to a 4-1 win thanks to goals from Tarek Baker, Brock Caufield, Matthew De St. Phalle and Roman Achan. Baker and Caufield each added two assists to notch three point evenings for UW. Baker’s last three-point game was also against Penn State on Nov. 24, 2020.

On Saturday, it was a different story for both teams. The Nittany Lions stormed out to an early lead and entered the third period of the game up 4-1. Despite facing long odds, Wisconsin battled all the way back, scoring three goals in the final frame to send the game to overtime.

With 90 seconds left in regulation, the Badgers pulled goalie Jared Moe and about 40 seconds later Jack Gorniak fired one into the net to tie things up. While PSU scored in overtime to take the win 5-4, UW showed a ton of fight to even get the game into overtime and that bodes well for the second half of the season.

Wisconsin scored two power play goals in each game, the first times they had done that all season, and Caufield and Baker added assists in Saturday’s game to give each of them four points on the weekend.

The Badgers will face Yale in their first game of the Kwik Trip Holiday Face-Off on Tuesday, Dec. 28 at 7:30 p.m. CT, then again on Dec. 29 at 7:30 p.m. against either Providence or Bowling Green depending on the first day’s results.

Wisconsin’s women’s team traveled way north to take on the Bemidji State Beavers over the weekend and UW was looking for revenge. Back at the beginning of November, BSU tied Wisconsin 0-0 to end UW’s 12-game, season-opening winning streak. The Badgers took care of business, beating the Beavers 5-1 on Friday and 5-2 on Saturday.

Daryl Watts starred for Wisconsin, scoring twice on Friday and then scoring twice again on Saturday while also adding two assists. Watts now has 274 career points, four behind Boston College’s Alex Carpenter, who sits in fifth place in NCAA history.

Nicole LaMantia had five assists on the weekend while Chayla Edwards added three helpers of her own. Goalie Kennedy Blair faced 31 shots over the two games and stopped 28 of them.