An early goal and three goals in the third period helped power the No. 2 Wisconsin Badgers to a 4-0 win over the No. 7 St. Lawrence University women's hockey team in the NCAA Quarterfinals on Saturday afternoon in Madison Wisconsin.

"We felt like the game played out perfectly for us and how we wanted to play," said head coach Chris Wells. "Emma was excellent and we generated the chances we felt we were going to get. We just didn't capitalize tonight or it could have gone the other way."

The Badgers got on the board early with a goal off the opening faceoff, as Casey O'Brien snuck one past Saints' goaltender Emma-Sofie Nordström just 16 seconds in.

St. Lawrence rebounded well and saw a few solid opportunities in the latter half of the first period, including a shot from Julia Gosling that ripped off the crossbar, just the next shift after the goal. Shots were even at 11-11 after the first 20 minutes.

Wisconsin came out firing in the second period, but Nordström held strong and turning the Badgers away, including two breakaway opportunities.

The Badgers outshot the Saints 21-7 in the second period, but still only held a 1-0 lead on the scoreboard.

Sarah Wozniewicz made it 2-0 Badgers with a shot from the point 4:24 into the third and Wozniewicz looked to add a second just over three minutes later, but St. Lawrence challenged for goaltender interference and the goal was recalled.

Just 37 seconds after the goal was called back, Kirsten Simms found Laila Edwards in the slot. Edwards skated in and beat Nordström blocker side for the 3-0 lead.
Edwards added her second of the game to increase the Badgers lead to four.

Nordström matched her career-high in saves with 43, while Ava McNaughton finished with 25 for the Badgers.

Wisconsin finished with a 47-25 advantage in shots.

"We had a great experience in Wisconsin and they did a superb job hosting this regional," Wells added. Certainly something all our players and staff will remember."
 
"It's never easy when it's over and today is no exception. We had a great team this year that produced a very exciting season. We can't thank all our fans enough for the support at Appleton all year and all the way out to Madison this weekend! We will see you all next September!"

"This is huge for our program," said senior captain Julia Gosling. "We haven't been here since 2007 and I think this has shown how our program has grown. I've been at SLU for four years now and we barely made playoffs my freshman year and now we're here in the NCAA Tournament, playing Wisconsin the No. 2 team in the country. For us it's an honor to be here and I think we deserve to be here, we had a great year, beating some top-end teams in the ECAC and we got to play some of those WCHA teams and we were right in there. It was an honor for St. Lawrence, our President was here, one of our founders was here, lots of fans, and our alumni were all posting about the game, there's just a huge community at St. Lawrence and I think they're going to be super proud of us."

The Saints closed their season at 28-11-0, having added multiple single-season team and individual records to the books this season. Wisconsin improves to 34-5-0 overall and will advance to the Frozen Four in Durham, N.H. next weekend.