COLUMBUS, Ohio— In its first game of the 2020-21 season, the top-ranked Wisconsin women's hockey team suffered a 3-2 setback at No. 4 Ohio State on Friday night at the OSU Ice Rink. 

Ohio State (2-1-0, 2-1-0-0 WCHA) came out and scored two goals early in the first period. The Badgers (0-1-0, 0-1-0-0 WCHA) answered with a goal off the stick of Daryl Watts with just over six minutes left in the period off helpers from Sophie Shirley and Nicole LaMantia. 

However, the Buckeyes tacked on a goal with 40 seconds remaining to take a 3-1 advantage after 20 minutes of play. 

Senior co-captain Brette Pettet opened the second period with a goal in the first 20 seconds to provide some spark to the Badger offense, but that proved to be the game's final goal as neither team tacked on a goal in the final frame.

UW was outshot by the Buckeyes 37-23 and neither team was successful on the power play. 

Three Notes of the Game:

• Junior Sophie Shirley scored her 100th career point for the Badgers with an assist on Watts' goal. A 2020 Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award Top-10 Finalist, Shirley now has 49 goals and 51 assists in 78 games for the Badgers. 
• This is the first time since the 2009-10 season that the Badgers dropped their season-opening game, ending a 10-game unbeaten streak (9-0-1).
• Graduate transfer Kennedy Blair made her debut with the Badgers, posting 33 saves. 

Straight from the Rink:
UW Head Coach Mark Johnson
On being back on the ice:
"The wait's been long. It was sort of surreal when we got ready to drop the puck like 'we're actually going to play a game here.' The players were excited. I think from our standpoint, the coaches, the first game is always exciting because you start a new season but more importantly, you actually get to see what your team looks like. The most important part is now we get ourselves in a position to get better."

On effort and execution:
"It's a learning process, obviously they [Ohio State] played a couple games last weekend and they probably took advantage of that in the first 20 minutes. After that it got better. The one power play we had we didn't do anything on and that was a little disappointing but again, I told the team after the second period it's 3-2 and we've got a chance to win the game. Now we know what we look like, things that we have to work on. We'll come back tomorrow and try to play a better game than we did today."

Senior forward Brette Pettet:
On the first game of the season:
"Of course it's going to be a little bit of a challenge, it's going to take a little bit to get into it. But I think that's not an excuse. There's things that we should have fixed, we could have done so it wasn't a matter of skill or anything like that. Yeah we had a tough first period but we came back and we had a better two ending periods there so I think as long as we come out and are ready from the start we should be in a better position tomorrow."

On chances against OSU:
"I think that's why it's important to be ready on the first puck drop. I think we struggled with faceoffs tonight and I think we struggled with a few other things but at the end of the day it was our first game. Not everything was bad, we had a good game. So I think it was a good learning opportunity and we're ready to go for tomorrow."

Up Next
UW wraps up its series at Ohio State with a 1:30 p.m. CT tilt on Saturday. The game can be seen live on Big Ten Network+.