April 8, 2006
By
CSTV.com
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ELLIOT OLSHANSKY
Elliot is CSTV.com's hockey editor and runs his Rink Rat hockey blog on CSTV.com. |
The pieces had been in place for some time. The Badgers entered 2006 as the nation's No. 1 team, on the strength of a first half that included the program's first road sweep of rival
With the Frozen Four in
The Eagles led 1-0 after the first period on Pat Gannon's fifth goal of the season, and were right in it after two periods, entering the final frame with the score deadlocked at one goal apiece. In the end, Tom Gilbert's power play goal made the difference, and Wisconsin prevailed by a 2-1 margin, taking home the NCAA title for the sixth time in Badger history, and marking the first time that one school has captured the NCAA Division I championships in both men's and women's ice hockey.
"It's hard to put into words the spectrum of the journey that we've had here together," Badgers head coach Mike Eaves said. "Talking about the beginning of the year and how things laid out - we had a chance to go to Green Bay for the Lambeau game, and then the regionals, and to come to Milwaukee, and playing a game like this, where it was so hotly contested in every aspect...These young men stayed with it."
The Eagles also "stayed with it," never allowing themselves to be subdued by the hostile environment.
"It was clearly in their favor," goaltender Cory Schneider said of the atmosphere in the
"After a while, you just tune it out. You worry about hockey and don't let other distractions in. I thought we played very well under that kind of scrutiny and that kind of pressure."
Even after
"I thought that our club got just what we wanted,"
That 20-minute game was won nearly halfway through, with Anthony Aiello sitting in the penalty box on a hooking call. While the Eagles had excelled all night at taking away time and space on the penalty kill - time with a number of shorthanded rushes, and space with their vaunted team speed - this time, Joe Pavelski found defenseman Tom Gilbert with daylight in front of him, and the assistant captain didn't disappoint, blasting the puck past Schneider for the Badgers' first lead of the night.
"Joe Pavelski made a great pass to me," Gilbert said. "I just buried my head. I knew the puck was going to go in."
"The power-play goal that
It was only the fifth extra-man tally the Eagles had allowed in the postseason, as BC successfully killed 45 of 50 penalties in the Hockey East and NCAA tournaments, and seven of eight against the Badgers. Those are dynamite numbers, ones that any coach would be privileged to have in the high-pressure atmosphere of playoff hockey. On this night, however, they weren't enough.
"We kind of go after teams and dare them to bear us with three or four good passes," senior defenseman and team captain Peter Harrold said of the Eagle penalty kill unit. "It's worked all year, and they snuck one by us.
"We gave them far too many power plays - they are incredible and have a great power play - you give them that many and you're going to get burned sooner or later."
"Burned" though they might have been, the Eagles were certainly not broken. The Eagles still didn't fold, and were mere inches from tying the score in the waning seconds of the game when Harrold's shot hit the post to the left of goaltender Brian Elliott.
"Posts are your best friend," the All-American netminder said, "and I got one tonight. I knew there were only a couple of seconds left, and I knew I had the short side. Hopefully, if it was any closer, I would have got a pad on it."
That turned out not to be a concern, as the "clang" of rubber on iron was drowned out by the screams of a sell-out crowd of 17,758, screams that intensified seconds later as the Badgers poured off the bench and sent their gloves, helmets and sticks skyward, celebrating the national championship.
"It's a storybook ending," senior forward Ryan MacMurchy said. "Looking at the schedule, you saw the Green Bay Regional and
And they all lived happily ever after.
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