The Wisconsin women’s hockey team advanced to the WCHA tournament semifinal with a decisive 8-0 win over St. Cloud State Saturday afternoon.
Senior captain Annie Pankowski led the Badgers with a hat trick on Saturday, capping off a six-point weekend. With her second goal of the game, she became third player in Wisconsin women’s hockey history to score at least 20 goals in each of her four seasons as a Badger, joining Hilary Knight and Megan Duggan in some pretty elite company.
She finished the game at 199 career points, one point shy of joining another elite club with Knight and Duggan as well as Brianna Decker, Sara Bauer, and Brooke Ammerman.
“To leave behind a legacy like that, it’s really humbling and it’s really exciting and I’m really glad that my career has come to that point,” said Pankowski. “You watch players like that come through here, and they just keep getting better. It was that launching point for them.”
It’s been an eventful few weeks for Pankowski, who was just named at Patty Kazmaier top-three finalist. That joins her finalist nomination for the Hockey Humanitarian Award. She led the Badgers in shots on goal each of the last two weekends and seems determined not to let this season end in the disappointment that her other three have.
“At this time of the season, you want certain people to elevate their game and make contributions. Certainly, her play this weekend indicates that she’s taken that responsibility,” said Wisconsin coach Mark Johnson.
Freshman Britta Curl actually beat Pankowski to the 20-goal mark, as her four-goal weekend powered her to the team lead before Pankowski passed her. Curl became the eighth rookie in program history to tally 20 goals during her freshman season. She’s been shut out over the final two weeks of the season, but seemed to find her touch in her first postseason series.
“I think this is probably the best that I’ve been playing all season,” Curl said. “I’m feeling good, and I’m feeling really confident in my teammates, too, so that helps a lot.”
The Badgers came out quickly and had the game in hand before the first intermission as Curl scored twice, Pankowski had her first, and sophomore Caitlin Schneider added a goal to make it 4-0 16 minutes into the game.
Johnson said he couldn’t have scripted the first period better if he tried, especially since it set the tone for the rest of the game.
“That first period was about as well as we’ve played all year,” he said.
Pankowski opened the scoring with a goal just 3:40 into the game with a long shot from the top of the far faceoff circle that beat St. Cloud State goalie Emma Polusny and gave Wisconsin the 1-0 lead.
Curl scored her third goal of the season on a great individual effort to double the Badgers’ lead. St. Cloud State was working to clear the zone and brought the puck from behind the goal net. Curl poke-checked the puck and the gathered it herself off the boards before carrying it in and beating Polusny with a wrister from between the faceoff circles.
Schneider made it 3-0 with a goal from nearly the same position that Emily Clark and Curl scored from in Friday’s game at a tough angle between the red line and the faceoff circle.
Curl continued her best weekend of the season, putting the Badgers up 4-0 with a power-play goal late in the opening frame. Freshman Sophie Shirley had Polusny screened, and junior Abby Roque’s shot deflected off Shirley to end up in the slot. Curl dove and ended up on her back, but the puck was in the back of the net.
The Badgers seemed to back off a bit in the second as Pankowski’s second of the game was the only goal. A minute into the third period, Pankowski scored her 21st of the season, netting her sixth-career hat trick.
Freshman blueliner Nicole LaMantia scored her second of the season on a power play, and junior Presley Norby added her second of the weekend to wrap up the scoring and give Wisconsin the 8-0 win.
The series win was a boost in both confidence and momentum that the Badgers needed after a disappointing regular-season finale where they played to two ties with Ohio State. Wisconsin will face Ohio State next Saturday at 5 p.m. in Minneapolis in the semifinals of the WCHA Final Faceoff in a rematch of sorts.
The results of last weekend meant that the Badgers did not earn the first-round bye and had to play St. Cloud State this weekend in the quarterfinals. While not winning the title was not what the Badgers had planned, Pankowski said it was a bit of a silver lining to be on the ice this weekend.
“We’re kind of grateful to have this weekend to play and work out those things that weren’t going our way last weekend. This weekend. I feel like we really got our team going as a unit,” she said.
After two dominant wins where the Badgers scored 13 goals and seemed to solve the scoring issues that plagued them, Wisconsin seems primed to make a deep postseason run, and to start, they get to face the team that reveled in preventing them from winning the conference last week.
“That’s the kind of motivation that you can’t buy,” said Pankowski. “You can’t ask for a bigger fire under this team, and that’s just really dangerous. We’re just going to be all over them, I can feel it.”
