Shirley leads No. 1 Badgers to season-opening win

Friday, September 27

Maryland Heights, MO

7:10 PM

Wisconsin Badgers

1-0-0

Lindenwood

0-1-0

Wisconsin

Lindenwood

Photo by: Kai Martin

Shirley leads No. 1 Badgers to season-opening win

September 27, 2019 | Women's Hockey

Box Score

Sophomore scores twice to lead UW to 4-0 win at Lindenwood

MARYLAND HEIGHTS, Mo. – Fueled by a pair of Sophie Shirley goals, the top-ranked Wisconsin women's hockey team earned a 4-0 win over Lindenwood Friday night in the first-ever women's collegiate game at the Centene Community Ice Center.

Junior forward Brette Pettet put Wisconsin on the board midway through the first period as fellow junior defenseman Grace Bowlby found Pettet open in the slot for her 13th career goal.

Wisconsin's power-play started firing on all cylinders in the second period as the top unit scored twice to put distance between UW and Lindenwood.

Junior transfer Daryl Watts scored her first as a Badger with nine minutes left in the second thanks to great passing from forward linemates Abby Roque and Sophie Shirley.

Sophie Shirley scored her own power-play goal minutes later to give UW a 3-0 lead before adding on another goal with 15 seconds left in the game.

Three Notes of the Game:

Senior netminder Kristen Campbell stopped all 17 shots she faced to extend her shutout streak to 270 minutes, 36 seconds.
Wisconsin improved to 17-3-1 in season-opening games and are undefeated in their last 10 season-openers (9-0-1)
Abby Roque tallied three assists to move into a tie for 19th in school history with 115 career points while captain Mekenzie Steffen added two helpers.

Straight from the Rink

UW Head Coach Mark Johnson
On the first game of the year:
"You always look at the first game and try to find out how we look against competition. probably most importantly the feel of certain players, the younger players. Now we can look at some video before we can start the process of trying to make ourselves a better team. A lot of new stuff, obviously the power play was good tonight. I thought the second period was really good. It's tough to duplicate game competition, so it's nice to get a game under our belt and come back tomorrow with a similar type of effort and then certainly there will be part of the process."

On the Badgers' top line
"Obviously that line's got experience -- they don't have experience playing with each other, but they have experience with being upperclassmen. They played well and I thought our younger players for their first game did a nice job so big thing is now we get to get better, so that's the fun part of getting the first game under your belt."

Up Next:
The Badgers wrap up their series with Lindenwood Saturday at 1 p.m. in Maryland Heights, Missouri. Following the road series, the Badgers return home to host Penn State, Oct. 4-5, at LaBahn Arena. Both games will start at 7 p.m. and UW will recognize its 2019 NCAA championship team prior to puck drop Oct. 4.