Lacey Eden leads Wisconsin women's hockey to bounce-back win over No. 2 Minnesota

For the second straight day the Wisconsin women’s hockey team responded to an early deficit in impression fashion.

Saturday, however, the Badgers completely shut the door on Minnesota.

Third-ranked UW scored five unanswered goals on the way to a 5-1 victory over the second-ranked Gophers in front of 2,935 at Ridder Arena in Minneapolis.

Junior Lacey Eden sparked the come-from-behind victory with a short-handed goal in the second period. She finished with two goals. Sophomore Kirsten Simms finished with one goal and one assist for UW, which heads into a four-week break with a 14-4 record overall and 10-4 mark in the WCHA.

It was a nice way to wrap up the first half of the season following a 5-3 loss to the Gophers Friday in which Minnesota scored four unanswered goals after Wisconsin scored two in a row to take the lead in the first period.  

Special teams were big for UW early.

Eden’s short-handed goal tied the game, 1-1, at the 11:05 mark of the second period.

"It was a huge kill by our team, you know a 5-on-3 with their type of team is really dangerous, so it was an awesome team effort to come up with that kill," she said. "Just coming onto the ice, I saw that Minnesota didn't see me coming and Casey was able to poke it right out to me, and there was no looking back for me. I saw where I wanted to shoot when I was around the blue line and just took it in" 

About 3½ minutes later freshman Kelly Gorbatenko’s power play goal off assists from Maddi Wheeler and Anna Wilgren gave the Badgers a lead they would not relinquish.

Eden, Simms and senior Britta Curl added goals in the final period for UW, which outshot the Gophers, 41-24, for the game and 77-46, for the series.

"(Friday) night I thought we played pretty well, we capitalized on the power play, but they scored some goals that kept us on our heels," Wisconsin coach Mark Johnson said. "We talked about having the same effort today and if we do that, eventually we're going to get a bounce in or a break and we capitalized on those things today."