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Badger netminders stymie Husky offense
The SCSU men’s hockey team came to Madison searching for something to cure their recent Friday night flops.
What they didn’t expect was for that cure to turn into a deadly Saturday night cold, as they lost three out of four points to the Badgers.
The Huskies skated to a hard fought 2-2 tie with Wisconsin on Friday night at the Kohl Center, but the momentum didn’t carry over to Saturday as UW buried SCSU 4-1.
Friday night, the Huskies had the better of the chances early on but UW netminder Scott Kabotoff was spectacular in the opening 15 minutes, robbing the Husky offense on a number of occasions. However, after a pileup in the crease that included Husky freshman Mike Doyle, Kabotoff was forced to leave the game with strained knee ligaments.
He was spelled by freshman Bernd Bruckler, who was the center of a fierce recruiting battle between SCSU and UW last summer. Bruckler didn’t face a shot in the final five minutes of the first, but he came up huge in the second when SCSU had an opportunity to open the game up.
“He’s a good player, no question about that,” said SCSU head coach Craig Dahl. “He made some big saves for them, especially in that second period.”
The Huskies did solve Bruckler once in that middle frame. Mark Hartigan picked up an errant Jeff Finger pass in the slot, turned and fired a quick snap shot that beat the Austrian goaltender low on the stick side for his 24th of the year but that would be the only one of the 14 shots in the period that would elude Bruckler.
It didn’t take the Badgers long to get the 11,000-plus audience into the game in the third. Matt Murray’s blast from just inside the blueline beat Dean Weasler high on the glove side 1:44 into the game and after Nate DiCasmirro went off for a slashing penalty that was called by one of the linesmen, the Wisconsin power play struck.
The play started when Brian Fahey’s shot hit Hartigan in the shins, the puck appeared to be heading out of the zone but Fahey made a tremendous play to keep it in the zone, spinning and catching the puck just before it crossed the blueline. He then slid a pass to his defensive partner Andy Wozniewski, who threw it towards the net where Sartell native Matt Doman knocked the puck out of mid air and through Weasler’s legs to give the Badgers a 2-1 lead.
Dahl immediately called a timeout to settle his troops and they responded just over two minutes later.
Doyle had the puck in the corner and centered it towards the net right as Matt Hendricks was crashing the net. The puck hit the sophomore in the belly and, to the dismay of Bruckler, found its way into the goal to knot the game up at two.
Hendricks had a glorious chance to win it in the closing seconds when Hartigan hit him with a pass just as he was splitting the UW defense, but Dan Boeser pulled him down with six seconds remaining in regulation. Boeser went off for hooking and the Huskies opened the overtime session with the man advantage but, like they had done all night long, the Badger penalty killing unit was up to the task.
“They shut our power play down and that was a big part of it tonight,” said Dahl. “They were very aggressive, I’m not sure how many chances we had, but when we had them Bruckler was there.”
The Huskies finished the night 0-5 on the power play, the third straight game that they have been held scoreless with the man advantage.
“We couldn’t get the power play going but I was still proud of how our guys played,” said Dahl. “We battled back in a front of a tough crowd and managed to get a tie, I guess we’ll take it.”
Saturday, SCSU found things even harder to come by. The Badgers scored first on a goal by Murray just 4:21 into the game. Kent Davyduke ripped a shot past Weasler, who was starting for the second consecutive night, to put UW up 2-0 in the second and just when it seemed like the Huskies were going to make a run at it after Jeff Finger scored to make it 2-1, Doman intercepted a Colin Peters clearing attempt and made it 3-1.
“That was the killer,” said Dahl. “When it was 2-1, we were still in it but that third goal really hurt.”
Murray added an empty net tally with 37 seconds to go, icing his birthday cake.
“It was Matt’s (Murray) birthday tonight,” said Badger head coach Jeff Sauer. “What a way to celebrate — score two goals.”
The Badgers had much more to celebrate than Murray’s 24th birthday. First of all, they shut out the conference’s most lethal power play for the second consecutive night. Secondly, they held SCSU to three goals over 120 minutes of hockey, something nobody else has been able to do all year long.
“We can play with anybody in the nation,” said Murray. “We proved that this weekend.”
Again the story of the game had to be Bruckler. The freshman finished with 32 saves, including a handful of dandies that resulted in a majority of the 14,127 spectator’s jaws dropping to the ground. One of those came midway through the second period when Hartigan got every bit of a loose puck in the slot only to see Bruckler flash his glove out and snap it out of mid air.
“I felt real comfortable getting the start tonight,” said Bruckler, who had ice on his left hand to heal the puck mark left by Hartigan’s blast. “It is so much fun playing at the Kohl Center.”
“He made some big saves again,” said Dahl. “But we beat ourselves.”
Dahl’s biggest disappointment was the lack of discipline his team showed.
“That was as undisciplined as we have been,” he said. “That is just not acceptable in my program.”
The Huskies must now regroup and prepare for a non-conference opponent that, before this weekend, might have been tough to get up for. Alabama-Huntsville is in town next weekend. Though Dahl doesn’t even want to think about it.
“We definitely have some work to do,” he said. “A lot.”
Around the rink
- After skating with Peter Szabo and Joe Motzko Friday night, Ryan Malone was moved up to the first line with Hartigan and DiCasmirro. He replaced Doug Meyer on that line. Meyer skated on the third line Saturday with Doyle and Lee Brooks.
Nick Clark can be reached at: [email protected]
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