MADISON, Wis. — Wisconsin coach Mike Eaves and Northern Michigan coach Walt Kyle had some of the same reactions after their teams opened the season with a 2-2 tie on Friday.
Each thought his team turned the puck over too many times. Each had praise for a goaltender that made his first collegiate start. Each lamented a period of the game when his team got outplayed.
The Wildcats put the heat on the Badgers in the third period, overcoming a 1-0 deficit with goals 2:09 apart by Shane Sooth and Filip Starzynski.
But Wisconsin’s Grant Besse helped the Badgers avoid a loss by scoring on a mid-air backhand with 41.2 seconds left in regulation.
Eaves, whose team lost its first eight games last season en route to a program-worst 4-26-5 record, said he saw Friday many of the same things from his team that he has seen in practice.
“We saw things that we liked that were moments of brilliance in practice. And then there were moments that we’d scratch our head,” he said. “It’s just a process with this young group.”
Besse batted the puck out of the air in a scramble at the top of the crease to help the Badgers avoid an opening-game loss for the seventh time in the last eight seasons.
“I took a little baseball swing at it,” Besse said. “Luckily, it was below the crossbar.”
The Wildcats outshot the Badgers 21-7 in the third period after putting just 12 shots on goal through 40 minutes.
And they cashed in, first on a power play when Sooth finished off a give-and-go with Sami Salminen near the net.
And they took the lead with 12:04 to play when Gerard Hanson knocked the puck off the stick of Wisconsin defenseman Kevin Schulze at the left of the net, sending it directly to Starzynski for a slap from the slot.
“I thought the third period was certainly our best,” Kyle said. “I thought late we got tired and we gave them some stuff, but you’ve got to give them [the Badgers] credit too because they earned it.”
Wildcats freshman Atte Tolvanen (25 saves) and Badgers senior Adam Miller (32 saves) each started his first collegiate game.
The Badgers coaching staff chose Miller over freshman Matt Jurusik and redshirt freshman Gabe Grunwald because of his body of work in practice and a little bit of a gut feeling, Eaves said.
“Logically,” Eaves said, “he was the choice.”
The Wildcats went with Tolvanen, Kyle said, because his play in practice has been better than that of senior Mathias Dahlstrom, who has been cleared to play after suffering a knee injury late last season.
“We could go with Mathias tomorrow, we could go with Mathias next Friday. We don’t know when we’re going to go with him,” Kyle said. “He’s got to take the job from Atte right now.”
The teams dressed lineups of roughly the same experience level, and the Wildcats had six skaters appear in their first collegiate game to the Badgers’ five.
Each side had its rough stretches — the Wildcats in the first period and the Badgers in the third.
In the middle, Wisconsin defenseman Jake Linhart scored his first collegiate goal in his 35th game, firing a power-play slap shot past Tolvanen in the second period.
In their dreadful 2014-15 season, it took the Badgers 21 power-play tries and 263:36 of total game time to score a power-play goal. This season, it took three tries and 24:20.
After the Badgers tied the game late, they thought they had the winner in the final second when Luke Kunin poked the puck past Tolvanen at the horn.
But officials ruled after a video review that the whistle had blown with 0.2 seconds remaining.
Northern Michigan won the exhibition shootout played after overtime 2-1, with Troy Loggins and Starzynski scoring.
The announced attendance of 6,467 was the lowest for a Badgers regular-season game at the Kohl Center, which opened in 1998.
