Sidney Peters said it happened both pretty quickly and frustratingly slow.
In an instant, the Gopher goaltender saw Wisconsin’s Baylee Wellhausen celebrate a goal and Sunday’s game all in one. The Badger senior forward scored 1:32 into overtime to hand Minnesota a 2-1 loss at Ridder Arena.
“She shot it and I kind of got a piece of [the puck] with my blocker,” Peters said of the overtime goal. “It bounced a few times, bouncing off my shoulder and into the net. It’s a frustrating way to get scored on because I watched it in slow motion.”
A moment earlier, the Gophers (5-4-1, 4-3-1-0 WCHA) nearly won the game when Nicole Schammel’s point-blank shot was saved by Wisconsin goaltender Kristen Campbell. It proved to be the difference in an intense and sometimes chippy Border Battle rivalry.
While Minnesota got off to a better start Sunday, holding the Badgers off the scoresheet in the first period, the end result was the same. The home team played with undefeated and top-ranked Wisconsin (12-0-0, 6-0-0-0 WCHA) for much of the game, but could not get a go-ahead goal.
“We were really proud of them in the intensity and the battle level that we brought this weekend. We need to bring that to every game going forward,” Minnesota head coach Brad Frost said. “They did everything we asked them to do. There’s not much more you can ask. You hope that the end result is a win, but it wasn’t to be tonight.”
During a stretch where the Gophers went 10 minutes without a shot on Campbell, Alexis Mauermann put Wisconsin ahead 1-0, 9:33 into the second period.
Minnesota got on the board less than two minutes later, however. Freshman Grace Zumwinkle needed 16 seconds on the power play to get open and fire a shot past Campbell, who finished with 16 saves.
The goal was Zumwinkle’s fifth on the power play this season, which ties her with New Hampshire’s Julia Fedeski for the most nationally.
“We’ve been mixing around different combinations and different formations,” said Zumwinkle. “That’s a tribute to our coaches, mixing things up so it doesn’t get too predictable. At the same time my teammates, I wouldn’t be getting those opportunities without them.”
Both teams had opportunities in a third period where tempers rose and chippiness escalated. The Gophers were unable to convert on a power play while Peters stopped six Wisconsin shots, including one in the final seconds. The redshirt senior saved another in overtime before Wellhausen’s well placed winning shot.
Peters finished with 25 saves Sunday.
“She made some nice saves, kept us in it,” Frost said.
Besides six WCHA conference points, the Badgers became the first team to sweep Minnesota at Ridder Arena in seven years. No one had done so since North Dakota on October 15-16, 2010.
The Gophers will get their opportunity to do the same in Madison during the final weekend of the regular season.
“It validates our identity and all the stuff we’ve been working on so far. We didn’t get the score that we wanted, but that game could have gone either way,” said Peters. “We’re learning and I think that we’ll be ready and pretty emotionally charged the next time we play them.”
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