The Wisconsin Badgers’ weeklong run of good luck came to an end in Sunday night’s overtime loss to North Dakota in the Midwest Regional final.

Starting last weekend when Miami senior defenseman Mitch Ganzak scored for the RedHawks with 3.4 seconds remaining to force overtime in the CCHA semifinals against Notre Dame, keeping Wisconsin’s NCAA tournament hopes alive, everything fell in the Badgers’ favor for the next seven days.

The day after, Wisconsin needed Northern Michigan, with its backup goaltender, to beat Notre Dame, Boston College to defeat Vermont, and Princeton to upend Harvard. Each game ended positively for Wisconsin, pushing the Badgers into the NCAA tournament.

Badger Nation applauds Wisconsin’s efforts behind head coach Mike Eaves (photo: Tim Brule).

This all occurred in the same season Wisconsin happened to be hosting the Midwest Regional at the Kohl Center, giving the Badgers home ice in the first two games of the NCAAs.

In the regional semifinal against Denver, Badger freshman defenseman Cody Goloubef hit the post in the third period, but the puck bounced off Denver goalie Peter Mannino and slid over the goal line for the game-winner.

Late in the second period against the Fighting Sioux, Goloubef shot a puck past the net which deflected off the end boards and bounced off of North Dakota senior goalie Jean-Philippe Lamoureux and into the net for his second fluke goal in as many nights, and one of the few breaks that bended in favor of the Badgers on Sunday.

While the Pioneers scored two goals in the losing effort, they hit four posts as the pucks clearly were bouncing the Badgers’ way.

“It’s always good to be lucky. That’s just the way the bounces were going tonight,” Wisconsin junior goaltender Shane Connelly said Saturday. “Sometimes the bounces don’t [go] that way.”

Connelly and the Badgers experienced that the hard way on Sunday.

Two Badger scoring chances in the first period resulted in the goal judge prematurely turning on the goal light: sophomore forward Aaron Bendickson’s goal was waved off because an official blew his whistle before the puck went in the net. Later in the frame, freshman forward Kyle Turris hit the post and the puck rolled along the goal line, but never across it, as North Dakota dodged another bullet.

Wisconsin hit three more posts, including two from senior captain Davis Drewiske, bailing out Lamoureux.

“We got off to the start we wanted, had a 2-0 lead, and hit about four posts,” Wisconsin head coach Mike Eaves said. “It’s kind of ironic, paradoxical tonight.”

“We had some lucky bounces, we got some unlucky ones, and that’s hockey, that’s the way it goes,” Wisconsin junior forward Ben Street said. “It just wasn’t our night … If those bounces go the other way, maybe it’s out of reach coming into the third period,” Street said.

North Dakota junior forward Ryan Duncan benefited from the pipe when his shot connected with the metal and landed in the net at 4:20 of the third period to even the score.

“It was just kind of bad luck with the couple of [North Dakota] goals there. What can you do?” senior defenseman Kyle Klubertanz said.

In the first period, senior forward Matt Ford could not corral a bouncing puck on a one-timer that would have resulted in an empty-net opportunity.

Sophomore forward Michael Davies had a breakaway eight minutes into the second period but was denied by Lamoureux. Against Denver, Davies scored his second goal on a breakaway after a Pioneer turnover.

The fact that Wisconsin’s good fortune ran out in the waning moments of its season stuck to a recurring theme of the 2007-08 campaign.

The Badgers potentially could have earned points in losses at Denver and St. Cloud State when they saw third period, game-tying goals taken away by referees Randy Schmidt and Derek Shepherd, respectively. As a result, it seemed fitting that Wisconsin’s fortunes ran one game short of qualifying for a second Frozen Four berth in three seasons.

Wisconsin probably couldn’t have found a better time to have its most prolific offensive period of the season.

And it’s no surprise that it came in the third period.

The Badgers turned a close game into a runaway victory Saturday, scoring a season-high four times in the final 20 minutes of a 6-2 victory over Denver in the Midwest Regional semifinals at the Kohl Center.

“I think it was a dagger in their heart right there,” said Badgers defenseman Cody Goloubef, one of four Wisconsin players to score in the third. “That third period, that’s what we need. I think that sunk their ship right there.”

Those four goals came in the last 10 minutes, 41 seconds, an avalanche that buried Denver’s hopes of playing in the Frozen Four back home.

Goloubef, a freshman, got things started with help from a kick by center Ben Street and a friendly bounce. Street got the puck back to Goloubef at the left point, setting up Goloubef for a slapshot that hit the left post.

It rebounded back off Denver goaltender Peter Mannino, then trickled over the goal line before Mannino could sweep it back out.

“It was a huge goal,” Goloubef said. “It got the lead back to two, and we just started pulling away from there. It kind of opened up the floodgates.”

That it did. John Mitchell and Michael Davies added breakaway goals as the Pioneers’ defensemen started to pinch toward the goal, and Davis Drewiske scored into an empty net with 2:46 remaining.

The 4-1 advantage in the third period Saturday means Wisconsin has outscored teams 49-23 in the third this season.

“The third period has been strong for us in terms of scoring goals, and I was glad to have that on our side tonight,” Eaves said. “I hadn’t seen our bench that excited. Somebody darn near jumped up and hit me with their feet. It was fun to watch the kids be that excited and share that with the fans tonight. It was special.”

Wisconsin has the two highest-scoring periods against the Pioneers this season. The Badgers scored three times in the first period of a 7-2 victory at Magness Arena on Jan. 12.

No other team scored more than twice in a period against Denver this season.

Denver’s Tom May scored after Mitchell’s goal to cut the Badgers’ lead to 4-2, but Wisconsin responded less than three minutes later to restore its three-goal advantage.

“It was a goofy period, really,” Drewiske said. “A lot of emotions going on in that period. We get a big goal from Cody and then we’re up. They cut it back to two goals. It’s nerve-racking, but I think we did a good job capitalizing on our opportunities.

“They obviously were down, so they were pressing a little bit. It probably was a little bit out of character for them, having defensemen down the wall and our guys getting breaks. And we buried our opportunities.”

The Wisconsin Badger power play struggled to find aggressiveness and consistency throughout much of the 2007-08 season.

For instance, the Badgers went on a 4-for-50 stretch to begin conference play, culminating in a period during which Colorado College junior forward Chad Rau scored as many goals on the Wisconsin power play as the Badgers, notching four shorthanded tallies in four games against Wisconsin in November and January.

That changed in the Badgers’ first series in Denver Jan. 11-12, when the Badgers scored a power-play goal in a Friday night loss which ended the drought and began a stretch in which Wisconsin scored in each of its final nine series.

The inconsistencies remained, however, as the Badgers became a team that, starting with the Denver series, scored on the power play just 10.3 percent of the time in the first game of a series while notching an impressive yet bipolar 23.9 percent on the power play in the second game of a series.

Jamie McBain leads the Wisconsin power play off the ice after scoring Saturday (photo: Tim Brule).

Saturday, Wisconsin senior defenseman Josh Engel and sophomore defenseman Jamie McBain teamed up to make the Badger power play appear as if it never struggled throughout the bumpy campaign.

Engel replaced senior defenseman Davis Drewiske at the blue line when the captain took a roughing penalty at 7:38 of the second period. Two penalties on Denver defenseman J.P. Testwuide gave the Badgers a power-play chance.

McBain, acting aggressively on the power play, slid down to the low slot and redirected a shot from Engel past Denver senior goalie Peter Mannino for a 2-0 second-period lead.

“We wanted to kind of give them a different look maybe that they haven’t seen and just try to get numbers at the net and I was fortunate enough to be kind of in the open area … and I was just able to tip it in,” McBain said.

“He likes playing down there,” Wisconsin head coach Mike Eaves added of the sophomore. “He’s an offensive defenseman. He likes to be down around the net so we try to play to his strengths a little bit, his puckhandling ability, his ability to skate, and he was effective for us to net.”

Engel has acted this season both as a winger and as a defenseman, starting the season as a forward and eventually moving to the blue line, his original collegiate position, after an injury to freshman defenseman Brendan Smith and a series of moves by Eaves.

“I tried getting the puck and just moving it right away. I don’t try to move it, I’m not a stickhandler like Davies or Turris,” Engel said. “Wherever Coach wants me to play, I’ll just jump in and do what he wants.

“We’ve always known that Josh has offensive ability,” Eaves said. “The way he looked on that first power play, we decided, ‘You know what, he’s got it going, let’s run with it a little bit.'”

“Give Engel a lot of credit. He jumped right in and did a really nice job with that first unit,” Drewiske said.

The Badgers’ style on the power play Saturday served as a contrast to the passive, sit-around system that it displayed at times throughout the season. Eaves credited this to Denver’s aggressive penalty-kill (highly successful this season at 88.8 percent), which opened up passing lanes for the Badgers.

“By their pressure, and what they were trying to do, they created seams and our guys did a good job of recognizing where those seams were,” he said.

Denver senior defenseman Andrew Thomas acknowledged the Badgers’ impressive work on the power play.

“I think that they were moving the puck really well. They were opening up our four guys and getting us a little bit out of position and making passes through our guys and just moving the puck really well and getting it to the net,” the captain said.

Pioneer head coach George Gwozdecky offered the larger, 200×97 Kohl Center sheet compared to Magness Arena’s 200×85 as a reason for the Badgers’ success.

“We’re much more of a pressure-type, in-zone system and when you’re playing on a larger, wider surface, you have more surface to cover. There were times I think we were just a little slow,” he said. “They did a nice job. Obviously with any penalty kill you look to take advantage of certain areas they give you. They were very effective in doing that today.”