Penn State hockey fell 4-3 in overtime to Wisconsin in the Big Ten Tournament semifinals on Monday evening to end the Nittany Lions’ turbulent, strange and unpredictable year.
The nature of the season is not entirely unique – Penn State was impacted by the oddities of a pandemic just like everyone else – albeit a month-long break in the action due to COVID-19 test results was not the norm, but the overarching challenges could be seen all across the country.
But the Nittany Lions were replacing the majority of a team that could very well be considered the program’s best ever. That was never going to be easy.
It was also trying to find chemistry with a freshman class that wasn’t granted the same usual freedoms in a non-pandemic year. It was a team trying to overcome an 0-5 start, and trying to navigate through a month-long break in action. It was trying to survive overtime games and low scoring affairs. It was trying to figure out why one of the most explosive offensive programs in the nation couldn’t find the back of the net. It was trying to practice like everything was normal when nothing was normal. It was meeting online instead of in person. Its head coach was doing his job without his family.
It was – everything was – odd, and far from straightforward.
Of course in the world of sports we pay coaches lots of money to overcome all sorts of strange and odd things, but the fact of the matter is that the Big Ten was very good, and Penn State was very much in flux. There’s not much Penn State could do about the fact Wisconsin had the best player in the nation in Cole Caulfield. There wasn’t much anyone could do about the absence of players that had helped build Penn State into the program it is today. Sometimes you could have done better, but sometimes it just is what it is.
In the coming weeks Penn State coach Guy Gadowsky will do a more intensive autopsy of the year that was, but in the meanwhile he can – for whatever it might be worth to him – appreciate the fact his team had a million reasons to roll over, and it didn’t.
It didn’t on Sunday as it faced a Notre Dame team at home that had pretty well beaten the Nittany Lions down in four previous meetings. It didn’t on Monday, tired and facing the conference’s No. 1 seed and the nation’s No. 1 player.
Instead Penn State fell behind 1-0 but tied things in the second period at 1-1. Through 40 minutes of play the Nittany Lions were still toe-to-toe with the Badgers.
And then Penn State took a 2-1 lead. And Wisconsin tied.
Then Penn State took a 3-2 lead behind Tim Doherty third goal in two days and his second of the night. But Wisconsin tied it again with just six minutes to play.
The Nittany Lions will look back on a five-minute power play that produced no goals with remorse, captain Alex Limoges will relive a missed wrap-around attempt in the game’s final minutes with a similar angst. But all the same the teams headed to overtime tied at 3-3.
But Cole Caulfield is Cole Caulfield, and the nation’s best player continued to make that fact a formality, scoring his second of the night after his first sent the game to the extra period on a breakaway not unlike the one Liam Folkes had in overtime against the Badgers four years earlier in the Big Ten Title game. Penn State goalie Oskar Autio had more than his fair share of big saves and made 41 on the night – but sometimes you can’t stop the better player.
So Penn State’s season ends at 10-12, a record that probably would have been better had a month of play not been a canceled, a record that probably would have been better with a normal training camp and out of conference slate.
But much like trying to stop Caulfield, it is what it is.
“This group always will have a soft sport for me,” Penn State coach Guy Gadowsky said after the game. “For me personally this wasn’t the best or easiest of years but [they] made it worthwhile – for the guys to keep such a positive attitude and keep coming back from the challenges, it made it really worthwhile for me in a very tough year and I will always remember this group.”
