Very, very good game tonight. I thought it was pretty even after the first twelve minutes, but Wisconsin waouple of chs fortunate to make it to that point alive. After that, the difference was Minnesota burying a chances and Leveille being the best goalie on the ice by a significant margin. Usually, her biggest bugaboo is leaving bad rebounds, but she was kicking them to all of the right places tonight, while the defense did a great job of not letting anyone loose in a dangerous spot.
Kessel was fantastic, but the story was Frost being comfortable with the third line going up against Pankowski and Clark. Piazza, Williamson, and Reilly (and Skarzynski after Reilly left the game) outplayed them, and the top two lines were able to exploit some mismatches.
The power play didn't get going, but it certainly seems as if the early season worries about the penalty kill are a thing of the past.
This was the chippiest Gopher/Badger game I've seen in a while. Ludwig and Langley didn't do anything at all to defuse things, either. Late in the third, McMillen took a penalty for slashing McKibbon after McKibbon really needed to be sent to the box for several things. I started to complain about just how dumb it was to commit that really obvious penalty, and then remembered that I've written a novel about a player that would take exactly that same penalty, and shut up.
