Burish Tallies Two As Badgers Shutout Huskies, 4-0
November 21, 2003 | Women's Hockey
The sixth-ranked Wisconsin women's hockey team fired in three goals in the third period to cap a 4-0 win against visiting St. Cloud State at the Eagle's Nest Ice Arena in Verona, Wis., Friday night.
Madison native Nikki Burish knocked in two goals to lead the Badgers in scoring, while UW sophomore goaltender Meghan Horras preserved the victory with 11 saves for her first career shutout. St. Cloud State's Ellen Brinkman collected 44 saves against the Badger offense.
'The game was very good overall,' Wisconsin head coach Mark Johnson said. 'I told the team that that was as good of a 60 minutes as we played last weekend on Friday up in Mankato, so I was really pleased with the effort. I was pleased with the pace that we were able to play for the whole game. Overall, it was a good solid game. We still at times struggled to score goals, but we were able to get those four tonight.
'My big thing was to try to play a lot of people and keep the pace at a level that we could dictate it. My message all week was speed and moving your feet, continuing to move the puck. We're doing a better job o f that than we were a month ago. We're passing the puck well and creating opportunities ... moving our feet and making it difficult to cover us. If you do those things well, usually good things are going to happen.'
Burish opened up the Badger scoring with her first goal at 16:33 in the first period with an assist from junior Amy Vermeulen and senior assistant captain Steph Millar, but Wisconsin wouldn't get on the board again until the third period despite outshooting St. Cloud State 48-11 throughout the game.
The Huskies held the Badgers scoreless in the second period by killing off three UW power plays, while Brinkman stopped 20 UW shots on goal in the game 's middle stanza. The Badgers would break the game wide open in a span of 11 minutes in the final period however.
A graduate of Madison's Edgewood High School, sophomore forward Burish beat Brinkman again at 8:33 in the third period with an unassisted goal. Just 21 seconds later, assistant captain Meghan Hunter would make it a 3-0 game with a tally at 8:54 courtesy of an assist from fellow senior Karen Rickard.
Wisconsin team captain Carla MacLeod tapped in her first goal of the season to seal the 4-0 victory against St. Cloud State with less than a minute on the clock. The team's veteran leader was assisted on the power-play lamplighter by Badger rookies Sara Bauer and Meaghan Mikkelson at 19:10 after a holding call against the Huskies.
Wisconsin (10-3-0, 6-3-0 WCHA) returns to the Eagle's Nest again Saturday night for game two of the series against St. Cloud State (2-7-0, 0-5-0) at 7:05 p.m. Live stats and a full recap will be available on uwbadgers.com.
