With the pain of falling out of the NCAA tournament picture, it's human nature to try and assess what went wrong. Aside from the obvious opportunities to assess the season (if only they held on against NMU!), it's also worthwhile to take a step back and see how UW stacked up in more general terms. The following data comes from
College Hockey Stats.
Scoring Offense
Wisconsin's offense could be frustratingly inept at times, yet UW managed to finish third in the league in terms of goals per game, with 3.27 goals per contest.
Scoring Offense: Games Goals G/GM
1 North Dakota 42 141 3.36
2 Denver 39 130 3.33
3 Wisconsin 40 131 3.27
4 Minnesota 37 119 3.22
5 St. Cloud State 38 122 3.21
6 Minnesota State 38 117 3.08
7 Minnesota Duluth 41 123 3.00
8 Colorado College 38 103 2.71
9 Alaska Anchorage 36 95 2.64
10 Michigan Tech 38 62 1.63
Not bad, eh? So why the frustration? It appears that there's quite a bit of variance in UW's scoring - more inconsistency from an inconsistent team. On one hand, the Badgers scored 5 goals or more eight different times. On the other, they were shut out or only managed a single goal in seven games.
Scoring Defense
On the defensive front, there's nothing to sneeze at. Wisconsin also finished third in the WCHA, allowing 2.65 goals per game. Scoring Defense: Games Goals G/GM
1 Minnesota Duluth 41 92 2.24
2 Denver 39 92 2.36
3 Wisconsin 40 106 2.65
4 North Dakota 42 112 2.67
5 Colorado College 38 103 2.71
6 St. Cloud State 38 107 2.82
7 Minnesota 37 105 2.84
8 Alaska Anchorage 36 112 3.11
9 Michigan Tech 38 122 3.21
Minnesota State 38 122 3.21
Special TeamsWisconsin's power play finished at
19.1% on the season, good enough for 4th in the league. The PK finished at
88.4% on the season, second only to the Jaundiced Gerbils' 88.8%. Thankfully, Wisconsin's nasty tendency from last season (and the early part of this one) of allowing shorties seemed to stop as the season wore on - UW gave up 7 shorties on the season, fairly even with the rest of the WCHA. The Badgers also managed to score 7 shorties while killing penalties, too. All of these factors mean that UW was the top WCHA team in net special teams, coming in with a
+18 on the season, topping 2nd place Denver's +16 mark.
Scoring by PeriodFan discussion on USCHO has rightly focused on inconsistency. One common observation was UW's tendency to start games slow. The numbers also bear this out.
Scoring by Periods: 1st 2nd 3rd OT Total
2 Wisconsin 27 54 50 0 131
Goals Allowed by Periods: 1st 2nd 3rd OT Total
5 Wisconsin 23 35 45 3 106
Several numbers stand out here. First and foremost is the OT numbers, as they're the reason the clock on the blog's landing page keeps counting. Second, UW did not score much early. The 2nd and 3rd periods were far more kind to UW. Maybe the guys just need a little tough love from the coaching staff during intermission, who knows. At least this means they're finishing strong, right?
Well, not when you look at when UW was allowing the most goals. That's a
lot of 3rd period goals to give up. Thinking back to the blown leads - against Denver, early in the season, against NMU, against Denver late in the season, etc.
The shot charts follow the same pattern. In the first period, UW was +25 over their opponents in SOGs. In the second, they were a whopping +137, but only +46 in the third and dead even in OT.
Individual Stats(
Taken from USCHO's Wisconsin team page)
| Scoring Leaders |
| Jamie McBain, D, Jr | 40 | 7 | 30 | 37 | 0.9250 | 32 | 1 | 4 | 1 |
| Derek Stepan, F, Fr | 40 | 9 | 24 | 33 | 0.8250 | 6 | 1 | 3 | 3 |
| Tom Gorowsky, F, Sr | 36 | 12 | 18 | 30 | 0.8333 | 0 | 3 | 4 | 0 |
| Blake Geoffrion, F, Jr | 35 | 15 | 13 | 28 | 0.8000 | 73 | 3 | 10 | 1 |
| John Mitchell, F, Jr | 40 | 15 | 11 | 26 | 0.6500 | 118 | 4 | 2 | 0 |
| Andy Bohmbach, F, Jr | 39 | 10 | 15 | 25 | 0.6410 | 24 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| Michael Davies, F, Jr | 34 | 10 | 13 | 23 | 0.6765 | 20 | 1 | 5 | 0 |
| Brendan Smith, D, So | 31 | 9 | 14 | 23 | 0.7419 | 75 | 0 | 9 | 0 |
| Jake Gardiner, D, Fr | 39 | 3 | 18 | 21 | 0.5385 | 18 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| Ryan McDonagh, D, So | 36 | 5 | 11 | 16 | 0.4444 | 61 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Ben Grotting, F, Jr | 35 | 5 | 9 | 14 | 0.4000 | 25 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Jordy Murray, F, Fr | 40 | 8 | 5 | 13 | 0.3250 | 42 | 2 | 1 | 0 |
| Cody Goloubef, D, So | 36 | 5 | 8 | 13 | 0.3611 | 40 | 2 | 2 | 0 |
| Sean Dolan, F, So | 35 | 4 | 7 | 11 | 0.3143 | 38 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| Matt Thurber, F, Fr | 33 | 2 | 6 | 8 | 0.2424 | 24 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Patrick Johnson, F, So | 35 | 3 | 4 | 7 | 0.2000 | 44 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Podge Turnbull, F, So | 24 | 4 | 2 | 6 | 0.2500 | 26 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Aaron Bendickson, F, Jr | 33 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 0.1515 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Eric Springer, D, Fr | 19 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 0.1579 | 14 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Ryan Little, D, Fr | 22 | 0 | 3 | 3 | 0.1364 | 12 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Craig Johnson, D, So | 23 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0.0870 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Chris Hickey, F, Fr | 8 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0.1250 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Ben Street, F, Sr | 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0.2500 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Shane Connelly, G, Sr | 37 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0.0270 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Scott Gudmandson, G, So | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0000 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Tom Bardis, F, Jr | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0000 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Some items of note:
- Holy crap, Big John Mitchell had a lot of penalty minutes. Our own Dr. Hook!
- Maybe that makes Tom Gorowsky into a Ned Braden - 0 PIMs. All we need is a striptease.(EDIT: Apparently USCHO's data on Gorowsky is wrong, he had 13 minors for 26 minutes. We'll just have to give the Ned Braden award to Stepan, then.)
- Very even scoring. No player with more than 15 goals, but twelve of them had 5 or more.
- Similarly, nine players had more than 20 points, fourteen had more than 10 points.
- Rough season for young Mr. Gudmandson. Only 4 games played and a nasty save percentage.
- When did Shane get an assist, and how did I miss this?
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