MINNEAPOLIS – The No. 2 Wisconsin women's hockey team suffered only its second loss of the season on Friday, falling 4-0 to No. 3 Minnesota at Ridder Arena.

For the first time all year, UW was outshot in a game, as the Golden Gophers (28-3-1, 23-3-1-0 WCHA) outshot the Badgers (30-2-1, 24-2-1-1 WCHA) 36-35.

"We knew the game was going to be high paced," UW head coach Mark Johnson said. "We needed to play five, six, even eight minutes of zero-zero hockey, but you know they scored the first one a couple minutes in, so they're going to get excited and then we caught up. After that it was a pretty good game, they capitalized on some of their opportunities and we didn't, and that's the end of the game right there."

Wisconsin was a perfect 4-for-4 on the penalty kill against Minnesota, as the Golden Gophers entered the game leading in the NCAA in power play with a .506 conversion rate.

The Golden Gophers got on the board early in the first as Megan Wolfe scored at the 2:48 mark in the first period.

Minutes later, Amanda Kessel, in her first game against Wisconsin since the 2012-13 season, scored on a wrap-around to double the Minnesota lead.

In the second, Sydney Baldwin scored for the Golden Gophers off of a goalie screen to give UM a 3-0 lead after two periods.

Kessel scored her second of the game on a one-timer midway through the third.

"In the second period we were better than the first," Johnson said "Then in the third period we had a couple power plays and they had one and the game slowed down a little bit on both ends. Overall I like the way we competed. We did good things, we just didn't do enough of those good things over the course of the 60 minutes.

"When we play each other, the team that seems to do that longer ends up usually winning. They did more good things than we did today."

Desbiens made 31 save in only her 10th career loss at Wisconsin. The La Malbaie, Quebec, native is 65-10-5 in her Wisconsin career.

Wisconsin and Minnesota wrap up the WCHA regular season on Saturday with a 3 p.m. contest that will be broadcasted on BTN.