Baggot: Badgers return to business against Bulldogs
January 06, 2016 | Women's Hockey, Andy Baggot
No. 2 Wisconsin looks to continue first-half success this weekend
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BY ANDY BAGGOT
UWBadgers.com Insider
MADISON, Wis. — Ann-Renee Desbiens intends to major in business, but the junior goaltender for the Wisconsin women's hockey team was all about philosophy when asked to reflect on the first half of the season.
The Badgers won their first 18 games – 11 by shutout, including an NCAA-record nine straight – and sat atop the national polls after sweeping a Western Collegiate Hockey Association series from defending national champion Minnesota at LaBahn Arena on Dec. 4 and 5.
But the unofficial first half ended with a thud. Wisconsin failed to score a goal in regulation or overtime during a WCHA series at North Dakota. A 3-0 loss was followed by a 0-0 overtime draw in Grand Forks.
The lone bit of salvation was that the Badgers (18-1-1 overall, 12-1-1, 38 points) won the shootout and picked up an extra point in the league standings, giving them a five-point lead on Minnesota (15-3, 11-3, 33 points) heading into the post-holiday portion of the schedule.
What was it like stewing in the juices of that North Dakota series for the last month?
"I think I'm focused more on what happened (in) the first half of the season rather than the last weekend," Desbiens said after practice Tuesday. "Overall, it's pretty impressive what we did, so I don't think we need to worry that much about what happened at North Dakota."
That Desbiens is taking the big-picture view of things is admirable and understandable. After all, she and her teammates did so much good defensively during the first half.
"A lot of good things came out of it," Wisconsin coach Mark Johnson said.
Desbiens leads the nation in save ratio (96.1 percent), goals against average (0.67 per game) and shutouts (10).
The second-ranked Badgers, meanwhile, top the NCAA Division I field in scoring defense (0.60 goals allowed per game) and penalty killing (55-for-57, 96.5 percent).
The first half was defined by the streak of nine consecutive shutouts, the longest in NCAA men's or women's history. Desbiens had eight of the starts and senior Megan Miller one during the stretch that began Oct. 10 and ended Nov. 14. The streak spanned 29 periods and spanned 583 minutes, 3 seconds.
The run ended in the third period of a 4-2 victory at Minnesota-Duluth when winger Maria Lindh beat Desbiens. Defenseman Lynn Astrup added the other.
Those details are relevant given the Bulldogs (9-10-1, 6-7-1, 19 points) come to LaBahn Arena for a WCHA series Friday at 2 p.m. and Sunday at noon.
The streak defined a variety of defensive strengths for the Badgers. They never gave up more than 19 shots, allowing an average of 15.4 per outing. They averaged 8.2 blocked shots per game. They killed off all 26 opposing power plays.
The record was a shared feat.
"Obviously Ann-Renee is an amazing goalie and we give her a lot of fame for that, but she's very good at giving us the respect as well," junior defenseman Jenny Ryan said.
"I think it starts with Ann then goes up to the (defensive) corps and then it comes to our penalty killing," junior center Sydney McKibbon said. "We were so strong in (killing penalties) that it helped with the shutouts. We've got a great defensive corps and that factored into the shutouts as well."
The streak also illustrated how well Desbiens and her teammates have learned to read one another and work together on the ice. Unlike a lot of her peers, Desbiens likes to come out of her net to handle the puck and that places a premium on everyone knowing where to go and what to do.
"I play the puck probably more than any goalie in this league," Desbiens said. "As we moved through the season I think the team got better at communicating with me and making sure they go to the right place, so it's easier for me to make passes to them and relieve the pressure a little bit."
Ryan said Desbiens is "awesome" at moving the puck and "that's something as our whole defensive corps has worked on" throughout this season.
"I absolutely love it," Ryan said. "It's really fun to play with her because knowing when the puck goes back there with her alone, we have so many options … because we know she can get us the puck."
But as cool as the shutout streak was, there was a sense of relief when it was over.
"I wouldn't say it was a negative," Ryan said, "but I'd say it was kind of like an unnecessary stresser.
"It was something that lingered that we didn't really need to think about, but we kind of did. It was a weight off our shoulders when we did end it."
The pain was more acute when the second-longest winning streak in program history came to an end.
"It's frustrating to end the semester off like that," McKibbon said of the series at North Dakota.
"It definitely still burns a little bit, kind of pisses us off a little bit that we had to end that way, but it'll fuel our fire for the next half," Ryan said. "We learned a lesson."
Desbiens said she wasn't herself when the Fighting Hawks scored two goals in the first period of the opener and rode the work of her puck-stopping counterpart Shelby Amsley-Benzie to the upset.
"I wasn't ready the first game," Desbiens said.
Why not?
"There was a lot going on school-wise," she said. "I didn't do a great job putting that aside."
Desbiens took a final semester exam in a finance class while on the trip.
"Wasn't the easiest class," she said, noting, though, that she did get an "A" on the test.
Five more finals awaited Desbiens when she returned to Madison, an academic load shared by many of her teammates.
Ryan noted that the Badgers also were coming off an ultra-intense series with Minnesota, which resulted in 3-2 (overtime) and 3-1 victories.
"I know we all expended a lot of energy that entire weekend in general," she said of the series with the Gophers. "I think the week after that we were all pretty exhausted. Our heads were definitely not where they should have been."
How did get Desbiens get her groove back and record career shutout No. 27, which ranks sixth on the all-time NCAA career list?
"Just going back to simple things, making sure you're in the right place and not try to do too much," she said.
A month has past, time devoted mainly to healing and resting. The Badgers will be without two front-line defensemen for the Minnesota Duluth series – sophomore Maddie Rolfes has an upper-body injury and junior Melissa Channell is playing for Team Canada in the Nations Cup – but the time has come to use a frustrating experience to their advantage.
 "We want to build off that," McKibbon said.
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