UW men's hockey: 'Sliver of hope turns into ray of sunshine'
There weren't many words on the voice mail messages that flooded Davis Drewiske's cell phone in a matter of a few minutes Saturday night.
"It was just a bunch of screaming and yelling," the University of Wisconsin hockey captain said.
That's probably well enough, because there might not be words to explain everything that happened to get the Badgers into the NCAA tournament.
How unlikely is it that the Badgers were skating at the Kohl Center on Sunday night, knowing they'd be playing Denver in the Midwest Regional at the same venue in six days' time?
Here's some of what they had to sweat through over the weekend:
** They were 3.4 seconds away from being knocked out of contention Friday night before Miami scored to tie Notre Dame. The RedHawks then won in overtime, one of two losses the Badgers needed the Irish to suffer.
** Northern Michigan started its backup goaltender and also gave its third-stringer some work against Notre Dame in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association third-place game. Nonetheless, NMU rallied for a 2-1 victory, giving the Badgers another favorable outcome.
** Boston College went three overtimes to beat New Hampshire on Friday in the Hockey East semifinals, then had to beat Vermont a night later to keep Wisconsin's hopes alive. The Eagles won 4-0.
Throw in Princeton's win in the ECAC Hockey League title game and a pair of victories by Minnesota in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association Final Five and you have the Badgers in the tournament as a third seed.
"Everything we wrote on the board there happened for us," Badgers goaltender Shane Connelly said. "We got another chance, and that's all we could hope for. We needed the hockey gods to help us out, and they certainly did."
At 15-16-7, Wisconsin is the first team with a losing record ever to make the NCAA field without being a conference tournament champion. Minnesota State, which leads the list of those on the outside of the numbers-driven selection process, was 19-16-4.
The Mavericks lost out in a statistical comparison with the Badgers despite winning the season series and the PairWise Rankings individual comparison with UW, and finishing higher in the Ratings Percentage Index. The key was Minnesota State losing PairWise comparisons with Princeton and Northern Michigan to fall behind the Badgers.
Wisconsin has some sympathy toward its WCHA compatriot, having been the first team left out last season. But the Badgers weren't offering apologies on Sunday.
"There's a formula, and we were ranked 12th," Badgers coach Mike Eaves said. "That's tough to argue against."
North Dakota got the top seed in the Midwest Regional and will play Princeton in the opening game. Between the Sioux, Denver and Wisconsin, there are 20 national championships in the regional and half of the WCHA's record representation in the tournament.
Wisconsin faces a Denver team that holds an 11-1-2 record at the Kohl Center.
"I think WCHA teams, you know it's going to be a tough game. You know it's going to be hard-fought," UW winger Matthew Ford said. "There's going to be a lot of battles. We know what we're going to get, and that's probably the biggest thing. We know how to prepare. We know what we need to do to have success against this team."
The Badgers and the Pioneers were involved in one of the most controversial and second-guessed decisions of the college hockey season. On Jan. 11, Ford had a game-tying goal incorrectly waved off because referee Randy Schmidt's incorrect view of a replay was that the shot didn't come in time.
The WCHA admitted that call was wrong before the second game of the series, a 7-2 Wisconsin victory. That started the Badgers' best stretch of the season, in which it lost only once in nine games.
Though it was followed by the Badgers winning only twice in their last eight games, that nine-game period essentially built Wisconsin's PairWise standing to where it could make the NCAA tournament.
With a lot of help on the final weekend, of course.
"If you're a betting man, you wouldn't have bet on us at the beginning of the week," Eaves said. "But last week we had that sliver of hope. We practiced three days, we practiced hard just in case these type of things happened. That sliver of hope turned into a ray of sunshine, and here we go."
