 | | |  | 2/3 Wisconsin 3, 10 North Dakota 2
Ralph Engelstad Arena • Grand Forks, N.D.
Box Score | Box Score  |  | |
| | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | Final | Wisconsin
| 0 | 2 | 1 | 3 | North Dakota
| 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | | | Scoring Summary | | 2nd | 9:21 | UND | Jensen (Menke, Gardner) | | 2nd | 13:13 | WIS | Burke (Ammerman, Harding) | | 2nd | 17:21 | WIS | Ammerman (Ryan, Channell) | | 3rd | 2:34 | WIS | Nurse (Unassisted) | | 3rd | 19:22 | UND | Dufault (Hirschy, Hampton) | | | | | Goaltender Summary | Min | GA | Sv | | UND | Amsley-Benzie (3-3-1) | 58:20 | 3 | 28 | | UND | EMPTY NET | 1:40 | 0 | 0 | | WIS | Desbiens (7-2-1) | 59:29 | 2 | 15 | | WIS | EMPTY NET | 00:31 | 0 | 0 | | Statistical Comparison
| UND | WIS | | Shots on Goal | 17 | 31 | | Power Plays | 0-3 | 1-4 | | Penalties-Minutes | 5-10 | 4-8 | | |
Nov. 1, 2014
GRAND FORKS, N.D. -- The No. 2/3 Wisconsin women’s hockey team, without four of its top forwards, rallied from a one-goal deficit to beat No. 10 North Dakota, 3-2, on Saturday at the Ralph Engelstad Arena.
The win marked Wisconsin’s third triumph of the season against a ranked opponent, as the Badgers fought their way to a win. UW was without forwards Blayre Turnbull, Emily Clark and Annie Pankowski, as the trio is in Kamloops, British Columbia, preparing for the Four Nations Cup next week. In addition, assistant captain Karley Sylvester missed the contest due to an injury.
| Fast Facts | | • The Badgers have now outshot their opponents in 11 of their 12 games this season. | | • With her three points this weekend, senior Brittany Ammerman is now tied with Meaghan Mikkelson for 15th in points all time in Wisconsin women's hockey. | | • Saturday's victory marked the third win over a ranked team for the Badgers in the 2014-15 season. | |
Courtney Burke,
Brittany Ammerman and
Sarah Nurse all lit the lamp for the Badgers (9-2-1, 7-2-1-0 WCHA) to help UW take four of six points against North Dakota (4-5-1, 3-4-1-1 WCHA).
After North Dakota's Leah Jansen scored early in the second period, the Badgers tied the game at one apiece, converting on their first power play of the weekend. Burke fired a rocket from the slot past UND goaltender Shelby Amsley-Benzie to tie the game at one with less than seven minutes remaining in the period. It marked Burke’s 10th career goal and her second of the season.
“I think when we went down one nothing, we didn’t get down on ourselves,” senior
Brittany Ammerman explained. “On the bench we had good energy, we were very positive and we knew that we were one shot away from tying it up so I think we just went in with our heads held high and just kept working and out-working them.”
Minutes later, Ammerman tallied her second goal of the weekend and her team-leading eighth of the year, as
Jenny Ryan set Ammerman up on a one-timer to give the Badgers the one-goal lead.
Nurse doubled the UW lead in the third period, as she stole the puck and fired a rocket from the top of the left circle into the top-right corner of the net. It marked Nurse’s second goal of the weekend and her sixth of the 2014-15 season.
“I think my line mates have been really finding me as of late” Nurse said. “I’ve been working on my shot, and I think that’s been really working out for me.”
With its goaltender pulled, UND got one back with 38 seconds remaining as Meghan Dufault scored to cut the Badgers’ lead to 3-2.
Wisconsin was able to hold onto the puck in the UND zone for the remaining seconds to earn their third one-goal win of the year.
“We had a good meeting right before the game,” Wisconsin head coach
Mark Johnson said. “We put our lines together and we challenged everybody to dig a little deeper and try to come up with 60 minutes of real good competitive hockey. Probably the six or eight minutes of the second period, the beginning of it, where North Dakota played real well, the other 50 plus minutes we played really well and earned a real hard fought victory, and it’s nice we got the weekend off and we were shorthanded tonight, but the kids fought, battled and competed and did a real nice job.”
The Badgers outshot North Dakota 31-17, and had a 10-4 advantage in the final frame.
Wisconsin finished the game going 1-for-4 (.250) on its power-play, while killing all three of UND’s power-play chances. The Badger penalty kill is now 45-48 on the year, good for a .938 conversion percentage.
Ann-Renee Desbiens made 15 saves to improve to 7-2-1 on the season.
Wisconsin will have next weekend off before hosting Minnesota State at LaBahn Arena on Nov. 13-14.
“Well just having the bye week it makes it go by much more enjoyable (after earning four points) and certainly with the situation at hand, other kids got opportunities, they made the most of it and played well,” Johnson said. “Collectively it was a very good effort without some of our key players, but again you give kids opportunities and they make the most of it, certainly bodes well for the next couple weeks to continue to build.”
