Bulldog women win 8-1 to complete historic sweep over UNH
The UMD women’s hockey team completed one of its most significant weekends Sunday, when the Bulldogs beat New Hampshire 8-1 for a series sweep that was not only the most impressive performance of this season, but can only compare in magnitude to last year’s top achievements, a sweep at Minnesota and the Women’s-WCHA tournament championship.
This one didn’t offer any league rewards, but it was filled with historic accomplishments. Maria Rooth scored both of the game’s third-period goals to give her a hat trick, and 15 goals for the season, Hanne Sikio scored two goals, to give her 16, and Leah Wrazidlo, often a spare-duty player, came through with her first two goals of the season, while freshman defenseman Satu Kiipeli also scored a goal.
Coupled with Saturday’s 3-0 victory, Sunday’s matinee triumph was the Bulldogs’ response to coach Shannon Miller’s demands. First and foremost, the coach wanted the Bulldogs to prove they could play with full intensity through both games of a weekend set. Second, she stressed scoring not only on direct attacks but by crashing the net for the kind of working-class goals they have lacked.
The ‘Dogs (11-4-1) picked the perfect time to do it all, coming against a UNH team that is probably the No. 1 women’s program in the nation. The Wildcats came into the series having lost 2-1 to Northeastern and 4-3 to Providence last weekend, and they had never lost four games in a row in their 24-year history. Until now, when the double loss to UMD drops the ‘Cats to 9-6. In only its second season, it was impressive for UMD to dominate a team like UNH, which has won the equivalent of 10 eastern or national championships 10 times, and has never had season worse than 14-10-3. That was in 1993-94, the year of UNH’s worst-ever losing margin, seven, in a 9-2 loss to Concordia. UMD put itself in the UNH record book by tying that margin Sunday.
“Duluth is a great team, and if you make a mistake against them, they put it away,” said Karen Kay, who is in her ninth season at UNH. “Players like Sikio and Rooth are really quality players; they’re so good that I think some of our young defensemen might have gotten caught admiring them.”
Coach Kay said UMD compares with No. 1 ranked Dartmouth, which whipped Minnesota 5-1 and 4-0 over the weekend, and she acknowledged UMD was missing six top players when it lost twice at Minnesota. “Dartmouth is deep, big and physical,” said Coach Kay. “When the top teams their whole teams and are on their game, UMD is right up there. There’s so much parity in women’s hockey now, but from a physical standpoint, Dartmouth and Duluth both have the best size, especially up front. Harvard is another team in that class, and the Harvard-Duluth series should be a good one.”
That’s next weekend, also at the DECC, where the Bulldogs seemed to reach a higher plateau than anytime earlier in the season. On Saturday, Sikio’s two goals and one by Michelle McAteer all came on direct rushes, but on Sunday, only Kiipeli’s screened shot from the blue line came on anything other than determined treks to the goal.
“We got a lot of shots, but not too many when we went to the net yesterday,” said Rooth. “Today we wanted to go to the net.”
Rooth went to the net for an unassisted breakaway from the blue line in and started the Bulldogs on a 3-0 first-period run after only 19 seconds had elapsed. “It’s always good to get a goal right away, because I’ve been having a little ‘down’ period lately,” Rooth said. “For me, it doesn’t have to be a goal, just so I can start with something that works.”
Wrazidlo, a sophomore who helped lead the Duluth Dynamite to a state tournament two years ago, got her first goal of the season when she smacked the puck that seemed to take forever to flutter past goaltender Jen Huggon at 3:55. “I shot it, it hit the goalie and bounced up, and I hit it again out of the air,” Wrazidlo said. “It finally went in, about an hour later.”
Sikio banged in her first of the game from in front, on a power play at 17:04, moments before winding up sprawled to the left of the cage. Another power play had expired by only one second when Sikio scored at 11:55 of the second period. It was a remarkable goal, because Sikio broke hard for the net on the left side when Rooth spotted her. Stationed on the right boards, Rooth had to fire a hard pass to get it through the slot, and Sikio one-timed it, almost casually, into the open net for a 4-0 lead.
When Michelle Thornton scored what turned out to be UNH’s only goal on Tuula Puputti all weekend, on a power play at 13:24 of the middle period, Kiipeli countered at 14:13 to make it 5-1, and Wrazidlo scored again at 16:45. “Maria’s shot hit my leg and went in,” said Wrazidlo, unintentionally underscoring Coach Miller’s reason for wanting her players to go to the net.
Rooth also went to the net to score twice more in the third period, first shooting in her own second rebound after Brittny Ralph’s power-play blast had clanked off the right pipe at 10:00, then completing her hat trick by skating to the goal-mouth and flicking in a rebound with 15 seconds remaining.
Bulldogs survive wild last minute to subdue Bemidji State 5-3
The whole team played hard, every shift, and pulled its goaltender to score a dramatic tying goal, only to get burned for a late goal and a disheartening loss. Sound like a familiar scenario for the UMD men’s hockey team? Well, on Saturday night, it happened again — only this time it happened to somebody else, the Bemidji State Beavers, as UMD escaped with a 5-3 victory for a nonconference sweep at the DECC.
The game had settled into a pattern, after Tommy Nelson’s power-play goal opened the third period by putting UMD ahead 3-2. But instead of ending that way, it erupted in the final minute of play. With Bemidji State goaltender Grady Hunt on the bench for a sixth attacker, Ryan Bachmeier scored with 51 seconds remaining to tie the game 3-3. But as the Beavers (1-14) celebrated their chance at avoiding defeat, the Bulldogs were reinforcing their focus.
“When they tied it up, we knew we were still going to win,” said Judd Medak. “We talked about it, and we had the feeling we were going to go right back down and score.”
Sure enough, the Bulldogs (4-12) went right down the ice. “Nellie chipped it to me,” said Medak, “and I got it down to Carlie.”
Carlie is Mark Carlson, the defenseman converted to winger who has found a home on a line with Nelson and Medak. When Medak passed it to Carlson, he whirled and was behind the defense. He broke to the net and scored on Hunt with 40 seconds left — a mere 11 seconds after Bemidji State’s tying goal — and the Bulldogs, not the Beavers, celebrated.
“Last weekend against Wisconsin, I had the same kind of chance to win the game,” said Carlson. “But the puck bounced over my stick and I couldn’t handle it. This time, I had plenty of time. Judd saw me, and his eyes got big, he passed it down to me and I went in, waited for the goalie to move, and went low with the shot.”
With time running out, Bemidji State again pulled Hunt, and this time, Medak fired a 65-footer into the open net for the clinching goal. It was Medak’s second goal of the game and gave the line four goals out of UMD’s five, with Nate Anderson accounting for the other one — his 10th goal in the last 10 games after going 52 consecutive games over three seasons without a single goal.
The victory gave the Bulldogs the first sweep of Scott Sandelin’s coaching term, and doubled their victory total. “We won 7-2 last night, but tonight Bemidi played much better. They played harder and played a smart road game. It was good for us, because it was 2-2 and we had to find a way to win it in the third period.”
To say nothing of the final minute.
UMD’s victory spoiled an impressive game by Bemidji State defenseman Rico Fatticci, a sophomore from Hibbing, who jumped up into the offense and scored two goals. His first one came shorthanded in the first period to give Bemidji State a 1-0 lead. His second staked the Beavers to a 2-1 lead in the second session.
“They have 10 juniors and seniors, and we have two,” said Bemidji State coach R.H. (Bob) Peters, who hadn’t even counted up the fact that UMD’s juniors scored all five goals.
At the start, it appeared there might have been something of a carryover from Friday’s 7-2 victory, because it took the Bulldogs awhile to get rolling. Fatticci’s goal came on a simple enough play, as Daryl Bat got the puck and broke in 2-on-2 against UMD’s power play unit. For some reason, both UMD defenders moved to take Bat, and Fatticci was left unchallenged to close in on the right side and snap his shot past Adam Coole at 7:31.
The Bulldogs got untracked with a flurry of shots to end the first period, and while they didn’t score, it seemed to send them into the second period in a higher gear, and Medak scored the tying goal at 2:04. However, the Beavers kept battling, even though outshot 11-4 in the middle period, and Fatticci moved up the left boards from the point and scored with a wide-angle 40-footer at 6:46 to regain the lead at 2-1.
“There was just a small opening on the far side, and I went for it,” said Fatticci.
The Bulldogs tied it again before the second period ended, when Nate Anderson swiped the puck and rushed up the right side of a 2-on-1, waiting until Hunt anticipated a pass and then shooting from the circle for the 2-2 goal at 16:11. It took a penalty to Bat early in the third period to help UMD gain its first lead, with Nelson coming through after some constant pressure on the right side for a power-play goal that made it 3-2.
The last 16 minutes seemed to drone along with that 3-2 count appearing to be the inevitable finish. That, however, would have been the easy way, and nothing is easy for the Bulldogs this season.
Two mystery Badger goals wrench victory from UMD’s grasp
When UMD’s Bulldogs start stringing some hockey victories together — and witnesses to the large improvement over the first third of the season as assurance it’s “when” and not “if” — they may look back on the weird bounces that prevented earlier victories as harsh stepping stones to success.
If so, the cruel twists that turned a near-victory into Saturday night’s 4-3 overtime loss to Wisconsin will remain the harshest.
On Friday night, UMD (1-9) had led 1-0 and 2-1, then fell behind 5-2, but rallied furiously for goals by Mark Carlson and Nate Anderson nine seconds apart in the final 1:45, only to lose 5-4. That was nothing, compared to the end of the second game.
UMD also had 1-0 and 2-1 leads on Saturday night, and the ‘Dogs went one better when Nate Anderson, the red-hot junior winger from Deerwood, Minn., who had scored the first and last goals Friday, scored two more on Saturday. His second goal — ninth of the season — staked UMD to a 3-2 lead early in the third period. That inspired the Bulldogs to a strong third period, after they had taken vast stretches of the first two periods without so much as a shot, entrusting their fate to sophomore goaltender Rob Anderson.
Rob, who is from Superior, is no relation to Nate, but his role was even more prominent for UMD. Wisconsin had a 10-1 edge in shots midway through the first period, but couldn’t score on Rob Anderson. Goals by Alex Brooks and Dany Heatley offset Jon Francisco’s goal and left the teams 2-2 after two periods, but Francisco’s goal, at 16:33, was only the second UMD shot in the last 15 minutes of the second period. Heatley’s goal came 20 seconds later, but wasn’t much to show for a 21-4 Badger advantage in shots in the session.
But UMD made a spirited bid to hold that 3-2 lead through the third period, being outshot only 13-12, all of which made the finish that much more excruciating. Judd Medak was called for holding with 1:47 remaining, a call by referee Mike Schmitt that UMD coach Scott Sandelin found outrageous. “I don’t want to say anything about the officiating, but I’m allowed to disagree with a call, aren’t I?” asked Sandelin. “The puck was thrown into the corner, and Judd followed in and took his man. He called that a penalty, and I disagree, because I disagree with them being the difference in the game.”
Rob Anderson and the Bulldogs were doing a hectic but effective job of killing the penalty through the last minutes of regulation time, and Wisconsin coach Jeff Sauer pulled goalie Roland Melanson with a minute to go. Rob Anderson made a couple more big saves, and was all set when Heatley got the puck wide to the right, near the goal line. He really had no shot, and nobody was open for a pass, so Heatley shoveled the puck toward the crease.
“They always tell everybody to throw it on net, and everybody crashes, and something can happen,” said Heatley. “I didn’t think there was any chance of scoring from there. He [Rob Anderson] had made a lot of saves, but this one got caught between his skates. I saw it go in.”
Rob Anderson was asked by several people about being bombarded by Wisconsin’s game-total 51-23 shot advantage.
“I wouldn’t say bombarded,” Anderson said. “It’s fun, the more shots you get. My job is to stop the puck, and if I would have stopped one more, we’d have won.
“That was the flukiest goal ever, though,” he added. “I saw it all the way, and it was bouncing and bouncing. I went to grab it, but it hit my hand; I reached again, and it hit my stick. I had it, then I didn’t have it. I was down, so I squeezed my legs together. Somehow it got through.”
That gave the Badgers a despearation 3-3 tie, with only 32 seconds to play. Still, the Bulldogs had another chance, in the 5-minute sudden-death overtime. To start with, they also had a power play, because Matt Doman took a silly roughing penalty at the third-period buzzer. But the Bulldogs failed to muster even one shot on the two-minute power play, and the Badgers came back for one final flurry of shots.
Again, Anderson withstood five of them. In the final minute of overtime, the puck bounced out to Dan Boeser, a freshman defenseman from Savage, Minn., who played junior hockey in the USHL for Green Bay, when Rob Anderson was the Green Bay goaltender. Boeser, who had one goal through the first 17 Wisconsin game, moved in, held the puck alertly and stepped around a sliding defender, then closed in toward the left circle. Anderson came out of the net, straight for Boeser, to cut down the angle.
Boeser tried to shoot the puck past Anderson, and did so, although the puck appeared headed wide of the net. Suddenly, almost magically, the puck was fluttering into the upper right corner of the net, and Boeser was mobbed by his teammates as the Bulldogs sank to the ice in disbelief, 4:06 into overtime.
“I was out so far, he couldn’t possibly have hit the net from where he shot,” said Anderson. “I turned around and all I saw was the puck about elbow-high, heading down and into the net.”
Nate Anderson, one of two Bulldogs stationed off to the right of the net helping to defend, apparently was hit by the puck, and it glanced and floated into the mesh.
“I played with Dan at Green Bay,” said Anderson. “He was a forward then, but coach Mark Osiecki is known for moving guys to defense. I feel bad about how we lost, but if we had to lose, I feel good for him that he got the goal.”
However, Anderson was not exactly offering congratulations when Boeser stayed on the ice after the handshake line to talk briefly.
“He was asking me how it went in, because he didn’t know, either,” said Anderson.
Badgers catch Bulldogs in final minute, win 4-3 in overtime
Dany Heatley’s second goal of the night wrenched potential victory away from UMD with only 32 seconds remaining in regulation, and Dan Boeser scored with 54 seconds to go in sudden-death overtime, giving Wisconsin a stunning 4-3 victory and a sweep of the WCHA series at the DECC.
UMD (1-9) had battled for position through two periods, and claimed a 3-2 lead on Nate Anderson’s second goal of the game, early in the final period. But Wisconsin (7-5), which had put almost constant pressure on goaltender Rob Anderson, made its final flurry of the third period pay off.
After Anderson — who made 47 saves as Wisconsin outshot the Bulldogs 51-23 — had weathered a minute of Badger power play, coach Jeff Sauer pulled goalie Roland Melanson for a a six-skater flurry against four beleaguered defenders. Anderson came up with two or three saves amid the scramble, and when Heatley wound up with the puck wide to the right of the goal, nobody was open, so he just shoveled the puck toward the net, anticipating a possible rebound. He couldn’t have anticipated a goal, but the puck squirted through next to the pipe and slithered across the goal line at 19:28.
The Badgers celebrated, but as the final seconds ticked away, Matt Doman took a roughing penalty to give the Bulldogs a power-play chance to start the 5-minute overtime. They failed to get a shot away, and when the Badgers got back to full strength, they came hard at Anderson again.
After a couple more saves by Anderson, the puck popped out to Boeser, a freshman defenseman who had scored only one goal all season. He moved in, deked to get around a sliding defender, and closed in from the top of the left circle. Anderson came out to challenge him, but Boeser fired a shot past the goalie and just inside the right post. As the Bulldogs slumped to the ice in disbelief, the Badgers mobbed Boeser in a massive celebration at the far end of the DECC.
Wisconsin’s insistence on getting virtually all the shots during long stretches of play meant that sophomore goaltender Rob Anderson would be the key figure for UMD. Anderson accepted the challenge, willingly or not, and the Bulldogs kept playing opportunist to take leads of 1-0, 2-1 and 3-2.
At the 10-minute mark of the first period, Wisconsin had a 10-1 advantage in shots on goal, but the game was scoreless. Then UMD inched ahead 1-0. As Anderson scrambled to get in front of that barrage, UMD got a break when Rob Vega was called for holding, and Badger teammate Kent Davyduke was given a simultaneous penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct for whining about the first call. With the two-man advantate, UMD made its second shot count, as Nate Anderson moved in from the right side and got off a shot that hit goalie Graham Melanson and popped up and over him at 12:07.
The Badgers, outshot themselves by a 5-1 count through the last 10 minutes of the opening period, came out with renewed vigor in the second period. The first benefit came at 0:31, when Alex Brooks moved in for a shot from the right circle, and followed it in to score on the rebound for a 1-1 tie.
It stayed 1-1 — thanks to Rob Anderson again — despite the Bulldogs getting off only one shot through the final 15 minutes of the middle period. That shot came at 16:33, when Andy Reierson corralled the puck at the right point and fired a shot that was deflected past Melanson by Jon Franciso for a 2-1 UMD lead.
The 4,446 fans were still celebrating the go-ahead goal when the Badgers got the equalizer 20 seconds later. Matt Murray, who had two goals in Friday night’s 5-4 Badger victory, got free in front for a point-blank try that Rob Anderson blocked, but he had no chance of recovering before Dany Heatley, who had a goal and three assists in the first game, plunked the rebound from the right edge of the crease.
The Badgers outshot UMD 21-4 in that second period, but their 32-10 edge through two periods was worth nothing more than the 2-2 tie going into the third period.
When Nate Anderson broke in on the right side, and fired a shot that beat Melanson low, between his pads, at 2:19, the Bulldogs had their 3-2 lead despite being outshot at the time by 32-11. The ‘Dogs rallied and battled the Badgers evenly through the final session, and appeared headed toward their biggest victory of the season, right up until the final minute.
UMD NOTES/
The Bulldogs played without senior defenseman Ryan Coole, who suffered a concussion in Friday’s 5-4 Wisconsin victory.
Badgers hold off UMD’s closing rally to escape with 5-4 victory
Wisconsin regained a little of its early-season flair Friday night, but just barely, as the Badgers held on against a furious closing attack by UMD before escaping from the DECC with a 5-4 victory in the WCHA series opener.
Actually, the game put on display exactly what the season has been like so far for the Badgers, who won their first seven games, then came to Duluth with a 1-8 record since then. The problem, according to coach Jeff Sauer, has been: “We haven’t been able to score.”
Dany Heatley, the heralded super-sophomore who was the NHL’s second overall draft pick last summer, spent last season becoming the top WCHA freshman, but he was playing alongside center Steve Reinprecht, who is now a rookie in the NHL. Without him, Heatley has struggled. But last night, he scored on a laser-like power-play slapshot in the first period, and assisted on three of the other four Wisconsin goals.
“I probably could have had a couple more, for all the chances I had,” Heatley said.
Sauer was relieved to see the outburst. “I’ve tried Dany everywhere, but we’ve had trouble finding the right combination,” said Sauer. “But he’s a player.”
When Matt Doman scored on Heatley’s third assist, the Badgers had themselves a 5-2 lead and only 2:20 was left to play. That’s when the Bulldogs, who had been alarmingly unassertive defensively all night, put their best foot forward. More accurately, it was their best hands — junior Tommy Nelson — who got them in position for an excruciating finish.
Nelson, who had set up Nate Anderson’s game-opening goal, and had played a strong game all night, got the puck deep in the right corner and zipped a perfect pass across the crease, where Mark Carlson buried a one-timer. That goal came 35 seconds after Doman’s goal, and with only 1:45 to go, but it brought the 4,361 fans back from their trek down the stairways.
Coach Scott Sandelin called timeout, and whatever he told the Bulldogs, he should record it for frequent replay. After the ensuing faceoff, Nelson got the puck to Nate Anderson and he went hard to the net, scoring as a reward for his second effort, to close the gap to one goal. That was at 18:24, nine seconds after Carlson’s goal.
That gave Sandelin time to pull goaltender Rob Anderson for a six-skater finish, bolstered by a penalty to Doman with 16 seconds left. Amazingly, Nelson came up with one more slick play, a pass out from the left corner that found Carlson open at the right circle. Carlson momentarily mishandled the puck, but recovered and got off a good shot, but Roland Melanson stopped it, preserving the victory.
“We were very tentative defensively,” said Sandelin. “We were back on our heels, and we’re best when we’re more aggressive. We were in the right position most of the time, but we didn’t always react to what Wisconsin was doing.”
The Bulldogs got off to a good start. Wisconsin’s Kent Davyduke was called for slashing after only 1:30 had elapsed, and Nate Anderson promptly drilled a screened, 40-foot shot past Melanson from the top of the right circle.
The power-play goal was worth a 1-0 lead that lasted until 8:57, at which time Heatley tied it with a power-play goal, from almost the same spot at the other end, out beyond the right faceoff circle. His slapshot was a blur that goaltender Rob Anderson couldn’t trace.
Nate Anderson almost put UMD back in front later in the opening period when he broke into the zone, cut to his left and fired a shot off the right pipe, but the Bulldogs got the lead anyhow at 17:45 when Jon Francisco ended up all alone at the goal mouth and deposited the puck into the left edge.
The Badgers vaulted from the 2-1 deficit to a 3-2 lead with a pair of close-order goals 37 seconds apart early in the second period. Heatley moved the puck to assist junior Matt Murray — once a walk-on — on both goals, at 4:09 and 4:46. Murray’s first try was thwarted by Rob Anderson from the right circle, but he was free to bolt to the net and he put his own rebound up and over Anderson’s glove for a close-in goal and a 2-2 tie.
Before the shift was over, Heatley rushed in from the right side, timed his pass perfectly, then fed the puck deftly to the left edge, where Murray, closing at full speed, steered it through the defenseless goaltender.
The Bulldogs kept battling for the equalizer, with the best chance on Nelson’s stickhandling exhibition and feed to Andy Reierson, but Melanson came up with the save. That came shortly after UMD defenseman Jesse Fibiger stepped up and flattened the 6-foot-3 Heatley with a jolting shoulder check that injected some life into the crowd.
But the Badgers kept up the offensive pressure in the third period. Kent Davyduke was the beneficiary of some loose defensive play when, after being stopped on the left side, he carried behind the net, circled out on the right side, and, still unencumbered by anyone in a white jersey, he picked his spot and shot it in at 2:06.
Melanson stopped Mark Gunderson’s strong shot, which didn’t seem that important after Doman’s goal boosted the Badger lead to 5-2.
However, the Bulldogs battled back to make it close. “The trouble is,” Sandelin pointed out, “when you lose a 7-1 game, it’s easy to get over it. The ones where you come back and get close enough to win, and fall just short, are the toughest.”
About the Author
John Gilbert is a lifetime Minnesotan and career journalist, specializing in cars and sports during and since spending 30 years at the Minneapolis Tribune, now the Star Tribune. More recently, he has continued translating the high-tech world of autos and sharing his passionate insights as a freelance writer/photographer/broadcaster. A member of the prestigious North American Car and Truck of the Year jury since 1993. John can be heard Monday-Friday from 9-11am on 610 KDAL(www.kdal610.com) on the "John Gilbert Show," and writes a column in the Duluth Reader.
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