No matter what sport you played we’ve all had “one of those games.” That about sums up what happened as Denver continued making the Kohl Center their home away from home after taking down the Badgers 3-0 tonight.
If you just looked at the stats from this game you’d be a bit confounded as to how in the heck it
wasn’t 3-0 the other way around, but that’s what happens when a team A) has your number in your building and B) combines good play with a ton of luck.
Wisconsin ended the game leading in shots 28-27, forced 4 power play opportunities, and was only down 2 (31-29) in the faceoff category against the #10 team in the nation. All good stats if you’re the Badgers and trying to pull off the upset at home, but it wasn’t to be.
After skating to a scoreless draw through the 1st period things would change in the 2nd. The Badgers and Pioneers played a great game of chess for most of the first half of the game, but following a Badgers penalty kill Denver opened their scoring account off a freak mistake by Mark Zengerle in the defensive zone.
That mistake allowed Luke Salazar to score an unassisted goal to open up the games scoring, putting Denver up 1-0 as Zengerle’s mistake hung Rumpel out to dry having to cover two sides of the net and Salazar read that, faked one side and wound up with an open net in front for an easy goal.
If trends mean anything that meant the Badgers were in trouble, coming in just 4-12-0 when giving up the first goal of the game, but Wisconsin didn’t fold and actually played increasingly better as the 2nd period went along.
I’d love to have been a fly on the wall in the Badgers locker room during the 2nd intermission because a completely different and much more aggressive Badgers team came out for the start of the 3rd period.
For all the effort that they put in to the start of the 3rd period it seemed that it just wasn’t meant to be for Wisconsin. They had at least a half a dozen great opportunities go ary for one reason or another including hitting a Badger skate to block a shot clearly going in, an absolutely ridiculous save on what was an empty net by Denver goalie Sam Brittain, and numerous missed rebound opportunities right on the door of the net.
With all of the missed chances it felt as if it was a matter of time before the Badgers broke through, but the hockey gods and Pioneers had another idea. At the 7:46 mark Jason Zucker took advantage of a bad bounce of the puck and slotted a wrist shot on a one on one past Rumpel to totally kill any momentum that the Badgers were building up and taking the life out of the building. It was his 16th goal of the season and the assist went to Chris Knowlton.
After giving an all out effort to get back to even the Zucker goal proved too much for Wisconsin to overcome as the offensive production nearly went dead.
Adding to the misery was a freak accident as Justin Barnes slid skates first into goalie Joel Rumpel. The Badgers netminder went immediately to the locker room in a clearly ticked off mood and according to some of the photographers in attendance there was a rather large and nasty cut above one of his knees.
Hopefully it’s just a matter of stitching it up and allowing some time to heel, but playing tomorrow night seems out of the question medically. Credit has to go to Landon Peterson as he faced some hard shots nearly right off the bat and was cool as ice after being thrown in completely cold between the pipes.
Down 2-0 and with just a minute left the Badgers gambled and pulled Peterson and in true “one of those games” fashion Denver found another fluke goal as Nick Shore sent a wobbling puck down ice just trying to get it out of the DU zone and that bouncing junk puck found it’s way to the back of the Badgers net like it was laser guided to ice the win, going up 3-0 with just 31 seconds left in the game.
With the win Denver kept pace at the top of the WCHA and really put the final nail in the coffin of an already slim shot of a home playoff series for the Badgers. Wisconsin will try to end the home frustration tomorrow night at 7pm Central and the game can be seen on FSN. You can also follow along with the game coverage on out Twitter account as we’ll be giving you live reaction courtesy of yours truly.
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