Wozniewicz lifts Badgers to WCHA Final Faceoff title over Minnesota

Late heroics send Wisconsin to their ninth-consecutive win over the Gophers.

The 2025 Kwik Trip Final Faceoff certainly saved the best for last, as the No. 1 Wisconsin Badgers and the No. 4 Minnesota Gophers played an all-time classic championship game with the Badgers pulling out a dramatic 4-3 victory last-minute win in Duluth.

It was the usual suspects giving Wisconsin (35-1-2) the lead midway through the first period, as junior Kirsten Simms lifted a saucer pass through the defense right to super senior Casey O’Brien for the go-ahead goal; however, the lead was short lived with Minnesota equalizing just seconds later.

Minnesota (28-11-1) would take a lead into the intermission after Josefin Bouveng sniped one past sophomore goaltender Ava McNaughton late in the first. The Gophers appeared comfortable after giving up the first goal, almost like it woke them up. Considering they gave up the first two goals to Ohio State on Friday before scoring six unanswered, that theory doesn’t seem unreasonable.

The Badgers drew first blood to open the second period and tie it up, as junior Vivian Jungels followed the play in from the defensive zone and fired a feed from O’Brien past Hannah Clark in goal. Junior Caroline Harvey added a secondary assist on the Jungels tally.

Freshman Maggie Scannell, just named to the WCHA All-Rookie Team, then made a great individual effort, chopping a loose puck between two Gopher defenders before skating around them and finishing with a backhander to put the Badgers back on top.

Things would calm down for a bit until redshirt senior Lacey Eden was sent to the box for taking down Gopher star Abbey Murphy. Minnesota, who scored two power-play goals against the Buckeyes, added another before the second period expired to send it into intermission all square.

The third period was back and forth with neither team gaining much of an edge. That nearly changed when Abbey Murphy took a long clearing pass and found herself one-on-one with McNaughton without another skater in sight. The Badger goaltender stood strong against the top goal scorer in the NCAA over the past three years, sending her shot wide to keep things even late in the game.

Penalties were few and far between late in this game, despite a few Wisconsin skaters being taken down from behind. The officials were inclined to let them play, that is until freshman Emma Venusio was called for a penalty along the boards that didn’t look any more egregious than any of the earlier infractions that went unwhistled. Nevertheless, the Gophers went to the power play again with about five minutes remaining.

Wisconsin successfully killed the penalty this time around, and with three minutes to go it started to look like overtime to decide the WCHA Final Faceoff was becoming real possibility. But after all she has done the past few years, you just knew Casey O’Brien would have something to say about that.

As time wound down, Minnesota took a couple of ill-advised icing calls that brought the faceoff down to Wisconsin’s offensive zone and allowed head coach Mark Johnson to set his lines for one final push. With 30 seconds left, O’Brien won the offensive zone faceoff back to Eden, who wristed the puck wide of the net. O’Brien chased and played the friendly bounce off the boards, sending a no-look backhand pass to senior Sarah Wozniewicz in front of the net, who buried the game-winning goal with 24.6 seconds remaining.

“Casey set me up perfect,” Wozniewicz said in the B1G+ postgame interview. “If I missed, I don’t, I don’t know what I’d do. I missed a wide-open net yesterday, so I had to get it today!”

The Wozniewicz game winner gifted Wisconsin their second-consecutive WCHA Final Faceoff title and sends them to the NCAA Tournament on a season-high 16-game unbeaten streak. Wisconsin has now beaten Minnesota in nine straight games dating back to the 2023-24 campaign, including five wins over the Gophers this season. The two teams could potentially meet again in the Frozen Four hosted at Minnesota’s Ridder Arena.

O’Brien’s game-winning assist was eerily reminiscent of her late goal to send the Badgers and Gophers to overtime in last year’s WCHA Final Faceoff semifinal. Same spot on the ice, same backhanded play toward the net.

She’s a maestro behind the net with ice in her veins. With an assist on Friday and three points Saturday, O’Brien has now compiled 83 points on the year, four behind Meghan Duggan’s program record set in 2010-11. She will have a great chance to chase that down when NCAA Tournament play begins on Thursday.

Speaking of the NCAA Tournament, Wisconsin will learn what their path looks like Sunday morning when the selection show airs on ESPNU at 10:30 a.m. CT. The Badgers will surely be the top overall seed and play a home game in the regional semifinal at LaBahn. Ohio State, Cornell, and Minnesota can likely be penciled in as regional hosts as well, but the rest of the bracket is yet to take shape. Clarkson and St. Lawrence look to be the eighth- and ninth-seeded teams, but won’t be able to open the tournament against one another as they are from the same conference. All the more reason to tune into Sunday’s selection show to find out!

WCHA All-Tournament Team:

Abbey Murphy, Forward, Minnesota

Casey O’Brien, Forward, Wisconsin

Sarah Wozniewicz, Forward, Wisconsin

Chloe Primerano, Defender, Minnesota

Caroline Harvey, Defender, Wisconsin

Ava McNaughton, Goaltender, Wisconsin

WCHA Final Faceoff MVP:

Casey O’Brien, Forward, Wisconsin