MADISON, Wis.— The Wisconsin men's hockey team battled back from a two-goal deficit and forced two ties against St. Lawrence, but fell 6-3 in the series finale at the Kohl Center on Saturday night.

The No. 5 Badgers (6-3-0, 1-1-0-0 Big Ten) outshot St. Lawrence (1-7-0, 0-0-0-0 ECAC) by a 37-13 margin and Wisconsin's power play capitalized twice on four chances, but UW couldn't maintain the momentum to overtake the Saints.

St. Lawrence struck first blood, scoring two goals in the first half of the first period, both on odd-man rushes.

Senior captain Cameron Hughes got the Badgers on the board at the 15-minute mark of the first period, redirecting a centering pass from deep in the corner from sophomore Trent Frederic.

After over 20 minutes of scoreless hockey, senior Ryan Wagner scored his first of the evening to tie the game 15:40 into the second period. Wagner got a piece of a shot from freshman defender Wyatt Kalynuk as the Badgers' 5-on-3 advantage wound down, making the score 2-2.

The Saints went into intermission with a 3-2 lead however, scoring with 12.2 seconds remaining in the frame.

Wisconsin knotted the game back up just 32 seconds into the final stanza as Wagner scored his second of the night on another Wisconsin power play. Staying low near SLU goaltender Arthur Brey, Wagner received a pass from Will Johnson and backhanded the shot over Brey's glove.

St. Lawrence halted the UW comeback by scoring three goals, one on an empty net, to finish off the 6-3 win.

Sophomore Jack Berry made seven saves in the loss while senior Kyle Hayton allowed one goal on his only shot in relief.
 
Notes to Know:

• The game marks just the second time this season that the Badgers have been scored on first.
• Senior alternate captain scored three goals during the series against SLU, two of which were power-play tallies. Wagner is tied for the team lead with three power-play goals and five goals, overall.
• Freshman Wyatt Kalynuk tallied two assists in his second consecutive game. Kalynuk has had at least one point in the last three games.
• Junior Will Johnson extended his point streak to seven games, while sophomore Trent Frederic and junior Seamus Malone keep their six-game point streaks intact.
• Former Badger Aidan Cavallini, the 2017 recipient of the Derek Hines Unsung Hero Award, was recognized on the ice during the game.

 
Straight from the Rink:
Head coach Tony Granato
Opening statement
"If you use what happened as a learning experience and you go into the practice week this week and you prepare for a team that is going to be nationally ranked next week in North Dakota then we'll be in good shape. If we forget about it and say, 'It happens, no big deal, it's part of hockey' and try to make excuses and not worry about it, then it will happen again. So learn from what happened, learn why we didn't play as well as we needed to, to get a win against a team that if we played well enough we should have been able to find a way to a two-game sweep."
 
On lack of momentum after Wagner's goal
"It was in key situations of the game, they made plays that were obviously big plays to bounce back and get a big goal to slow our momentum down. Wags was great again around the net, he battled and made the plays and we just needed more of that, more guys who were willing to go to the net and pay a price to score some goals."
 
On playing from behind
"The lead is important for sure. We seemed like we were chasing it all night. When we got tied up there in the third period I thought 'okay now the ice is going to tilt our way' and we won't have to look back, but instead they bounced back and they probably scored on the next two shots. We didn't get any power plays, we didn't get many calls there to give us a chance after that, I thought we had a few opportunities and maybe we drew a couple, but we weren't able to do that either."
 
On the decision to start Jack Berry or Kyle Hayton vs. old team
"Well first of all, Jack's (Berry) performances last weekend to get the shutout against Northern Michigan. The way he played I thought it would be important to get a solid goaltending performance tonight was important for us. There's emotions and excitement attached to playing against your former team and I thought it would be a nice night for (Kyle) to sit back and enjoy playing his former team in a different way. Getting his team ready to go, pushing from the bench side of things. And that obviously was not a good plan, but that's what we thought when we made the decision to start Berry. We've got a lot of games coming up, we need two goaltenders. We thought this was a good opportunity for Berry."
 
Sophomore Jack Berry
On how he felt tonight
"I felt pretty good. You got to make those saves. When your teams giving up 10 or fewer shots, those are saves you got to make and tonight that just didn't happen."
 
Senior Ryan Wagner
On lack of momentum after third period goal
"It's good that we got that goal, but none of us had it tonight. We didn't have that jump. None of us played a good game, and if we want to be playing hockey in April, then these games can't happen for us. We've got to be better all around."
 
On playing from behind
"It's tough, but that's something that we have to adjust to and learn from it. We can't be giving grade-A chances like that five minutes into a game. We don't want to be playing from behind the entire game. But when that does happen, that's on the players and us to dig ourselves back out of it. And tonight, we just didn't have it. We weren't working hard enough. We got outworked."
 
Junior Peter Tischke
On SLU's first goal
"First goal I just chipped the puck out, it took a bad bounce on us, I swung at it and I just wasn't quick enough to get back and get a stick on it."
 
On learning to handle the number that's in front of their name
"It just goes to show that we can't take any team lightly. Sure we're number whatever in the nation but we can't take any team lightly. Every team is going to be gunning for us and giving us their best so we've just got to be able to play it through. Even when we don't feel 100 percent, we've got to be able to show we can still play through that and that's what it takes to be a championship team.
 
On St. Lawrence's effort
"Yeah, they played really hard from start to finish. We obviously didn't do enough. We didn't do much right today. We've got to go through video this week and get ready for North Dakota because they're going to be gunning for us too. We've just got to get prepared this week and we should have known before we can't take any team lightly."
 
Up Next:
Wisconsin continues its homestand on Friday and Saturday, Nov. 3-4, hosting No. 4 North Dakota. Both games being at 7 p.m.

 
Wisconsin vs. St. Lawrence - 10/28/17 by Wisconsin Badgers on Exposure