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Wisconsin men’s hockey: embarrassing end to disastrous season

The Badgers were swept by the Gophers, losing by a combined 13-0 over the two games this weekend.

By Drew Hamm
NCAA Hockey: Big Ten Hockey Championship-Minnesota vs Wisconsin
This was taken during last season’s Big Ten Tournament, but it looks the same as this weekend’s series.
South Bend Tribune-USA TODAY NETWORK

I don’t really know what to say about this team that isn’t just angry ranting.

This weekend, the last of the regular season, the Wisconsin Badgers men’s hockey team traveled to Minneapolis to play the Golden Gophers. Minnesota was playing for a Big Ten title and Wisconsin could spoil their No. 1’s rival bid for a trophy with a win. Instead, basically the opposite of that happened.

The Badgers lost 5-0 on Friday night and you would probably think that it can’t get any worse than that on Saturday, right? Lmao, wrong. Wisconsin got shutout again in the second game of the series, this time the final score was 8-0. Making this even worse, both games were nationally televised so college hockey fans all over the country saw how bad the Badgers got beat.

(This was @BadgerMHockey’s last update from Saturday’s game. The Gophers doubled their goal total after this tweet.)

According to this Todd Milewski article in the State Journal, this was Wisconsin’s worst loss to Minnesota in 257 times since restarting their program in 1963. The combined 13-0 margin was the largest against UW since 1964. The loss on Saturday was No. 13 on the year, which is also a Wisconsin 59-year modern era record for road losses in a season. Overall, this was Wisconsin’s second worst season in that same modern era.

Wisconsin finishes the year with a record of 9-22-3 overall and 6-17-1-1 in the Big Ten. UW finished tied for fifth in the Big Ten, but will be the sixth seed in the upcoming Big Ten Tournament. Somehow Michigan State finished with a worse conference record than Wisconsin, miraculously keeping the Badgers out of the Big Ten cellar.

The Badgers will travel to South Bend, Ind. to take on the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the conference tournament starting Friday. Game times are: 6 p.m. CT Friday, 5 p.m. CT Saturday and Sunday (if necessary). Wisconsin is 1-3 against the Irish this season and, quite frankly, I don’t know if there is any amount of money you could offer me to watch this series.

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