Rastall Ramblings: Badgers Hockey Enjoys Postseason Glory

To paraphrase the late, legendary “Badger Bob” Johnson: It’s a great month for hockey.

Fans of Wisconsin Badgers hockey were eating good in the month of March, with the women’s program adding just the latest gem to their dynasty and the men’s team hitting postseason highs they hadn’t reached in a decade and a half.

The good times got rolling with the Badger women doing what they do so often this time of year: staking their claim as the best team in the country.

Wisconsin entered the season as the defending champions and the preseason No. 1 in the rankings, living up to that hype by winning the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA) regular season championship. However, they missed out on the top seed in the NCAA Tournament after falling 2-1 to perennial rival Ohio State in the championship game of the WCHA tournament.

Wisconsin and Ohio State would meet again in the national title game for a fourth consecutive year, though it was not a foregone conclusion that it would come to pass. The Badgers needed an overtime winner from Kristen Simms on the power play to escape their Frozen Four matchup with Penn State.

That only added to the legend of Simms, who scored the game-winning goal in the 2023 national championship game and then scoring both a dramatic game-tying penalty shot followed by the OT winner in last year’s national title tilt.

This meant we got Wisconsin-Ohio State IV for all the marbles, with the Badgers having won in 2023 and 2025 and the Buckeyes victorious in 2024 — all three games being decided by one goal.

Ohio State came out firing, but it was the Badgers who scored twice in the front half of the first period for an early lead. Despite four power-play opportunities, Wisconsin could not extend the advantage further and still sat ahead 2-0 after 40 minutes.

After the Buckeyes scored two goals in quick succession early in the third period to knot things at 2-2, Wisconsin’s Claire Enright became the program’s latest March legend with her go-ahead goal with 6:18 remaining in what proved to be the natty winner.

It’s now nine national championships for the country’s gold standard women’s hockey program under Mark Johnson, who continues to add to his status as the greatest Badger of all-time. The Badgers have won back-to-back national titles, three out of the last four and five out the last seven.

It capped an absolute dream winter for Simms, goaltender Ava McNaughton and defensemen Laila Edwards and Caroline Harvey, who all won gold medals for the U.S. at February’s Winter Olympics.

The national championship game also marked a fitting farewell for Badger seniors Harvey, Edwards, Simms, Enright, Marianne Picard, Lacy Eden, Chloe Baker, McKayla Zilisch and Vivian Jungels, who will go down as the most decorated group in program history. Eden won a record four national titles during her time in Madison.

(As an aside, shoutout to the UW–River Falls women’s hockey team for also solidifying their dynastic status this past weekend by winning their third straight Division III national championship under head coach Joe Cranston.)

Of course, the Badger women thriving in March is nothing new. However, at long last, the men’s team decided to get it on the postseason fun.

The men’s program ended a 16-year drought by not just winning their first NCAA Tournament game since 2010 but going one step further and making their first Frozen Four since that same year.

Wisconsin went through a whirlwind season under third-year head coach Mike Hastings (who previously led Minnesota State to a pair of Frozen Fours) that included the Badgers reaching as high as No. 2 in the rankings in December, a brutal six-game losing streak in January and a return to a more stable form from February on.

Wisconsin got the NCAA Tournament monkey off their back with a 5-1 romp of Dartmouth in the first round (ending a five-game losing streak in the tournament), then punched their Frozen Four ticket with a 4-3 thriller of an OT win over Michigan State in the regional finals.

Though it looked bleak for the Badgers when they trailed the Spartans 3-1 in the third, they scored two goals 34 seconds apart to tie the score and Ben Dexheimer’s shot from the point was deflected into the net only 24 seconds into overtime to send Wisconsin to Las Vegas for the national semifinals.

This year’s Frozen Four has a decidedly blue blood flavor to it, as the four participants are the four programs with the most men’s hockey national titles in NCAA history: Denver (10), Michigan (nine), North Dakota (eight) and Wisconsin (six).

The Badgers square off against North Dakota on Thursday with the winner getting either Denver or Michigan for the national championship on Saturday. A Wisconsin triumph would mark only the second time a school has won both the women’s and men’s title in the same year — the other being themselves in 2006.

But no matter how it ends for them in Vegas, this is a breakthrough moment for a proud program that had hit baffling lows during the 2010s and early 2020s. More well-rounded Badger hockey success is back, and it just might be here to stay.