MADISON, Wis. --
Wisconsin men's hockey head coach Mike Eaves had talked all week about
how the new locker room and facilities of newly constructed LaBahn Arena
were a nice new house, but not yet a home.
The Badgers (3-7-5,
2-5-5 WCHA) were finally able to begin breaking in their new house on
Thursday night by defeating Alabama Huntsville 5-0, recording their
first win at the Kohl Center this season and then
turning up the celebration tunes in the locker room post game.
"I think that's the
first night we've been able to use our sound system to the fullest,"
Sean Little (Fond du Lac, Wis.) said. "(We) finally celebrate a win at
home."
There's no place quite like home.
There's also no place
like a winning locker room, where Little said the first song of choice
after the win was Portugese-French singer, songwriter and producer,
Lucenzo.
A fitting choice, as it
was fluent French speaker Nic Kerdiles (Irvine, Calif.) who made the
first sweet music of the night, scoring his first goal as a Badger and
prompting the horn to sound in the Kohl Center
at the 4:00 mark of the first period to make it 1-0 UW.
"I'm happy to finally
get the monkey off my back, as I would call it, and finally get that
goal," Kerdiles said. "At the end of the day, I'm just excited for the
way our team played tonight."
As a team, the Badgers
worked together to post a group of impressive
numbers. They tied their season-high in shots on goal (37), set
a season-high for goals (five) in a game and set a school record for
fewest
shots allowed in a game (nine).
Kerdiles was one of two
Badgers to score his first goal of the season, along with Little. The
freshman forward also scored again in the third period, joining Michael
Mersch (Park Ridge, Ill.) as the second two-goal
scorer on the night.
Just under three
minutes after Kerdiles' first goal, Derek Lee (North Vancouver, British
Columbia) found Mersch in front of the net for a one-time score on the
power play. The goal, also assisted by Mark Zengerle
(Rochester, N.Y.), put the Badgers up 2-0 at the 6:43 mark of the
period.
Mersch's night wasn't
done, as the junior forward scored his 11th goal of the season at the
14:29 mark of the second period, thanks in large part to an assist from
Lee.
Grabbing the puck and
skating behind the net, Lee appeared to be making a hard wrap around,
but instead passed it back halfway through to a wide open Mersch, who
blasted it home past UAH goalie John Griggs for
his second score of the game and the 3-0 UW lead.
In the third period,
Little scored his first goal of the season, as the junior positioned
himself in front of the UAH net, got his stick on a loose puck and poked
it through the legs and past Griggs to make it
4-0 UW at the 2:51 mark of the period.
Kerdiles and Zengerle
worked together on a two-on-one opportunity to close out the scoring, as
Zengerle fed Kerdiles, who blasted it past goalie Gregg Gruehl for his
second score. The goal came at the 4:31 mark
and put UW ahead by the final score of 5-0.
"We were talking about
it a little bit before the game to get the fans the ice cream," Mersch
said. "A lot of guys contributed tonight, and that's pretty big for us."
Though they won't enjoy
the ice cream themselves, a five-goal win going away was sweet enough
for a team of Badgers that had already endured six overtime games and
skated to five ties on the season.
Wisconsin looks to
replicate the feeling of its winning ways tomorrow night and record the
first series sweep of the season, facing off against Alabama Huntsville
again at 7 p.m. (CT).
