{"id":22916,"date":"2000-10-03T14:04:00","date_gmt":"2000-10-03T19:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uscho.com\/2000\/10\/03\/season-preview-wisconsin-badgers\/"},"modified":"2010-08-17T19:53:56","modified_gmt":"2010-08-18T00:53:56","slug":"season-preview-wisconsin-badgers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uscho.com\/2000\/10\/03\/season-preview-wisconsin-badgers\/","title":{"rendered":"Season Preview: Wisconsin Badgers"},"content":{"rendered":"
Everything else could wait. There was one bit of news the Wisconsin hockey program wanted to hear over all others.<\/p>\n
Dany Heatley is coming back.<\/p>\n
So they waited, the Badgers did, months after finishing one of the most successful campaigns on record, yet without a national championship to show for it. They waited to hear whether Heatley, the No. 2 pick in this year’s NHL draft, would return to school or sign with the Atlanta Thrashers.<\/p>\n
The Badgers could be good without Heatley, the runaway choice for WCHA rookie of the year last season, when he scored 28 goals and had 56 points. But there were questions as to if the Badgers could once again make a run for the MacNaughton Cup.<\/p>\n
No bother. Heatley’s back. And so are the Badgers’ chances for the league’s regular-season championship.<\/p>\n
“It’s good for all of college hockey, not only for Wisconsin,” Wisconsin coach Jeff Sauer said, apparently forgetting the other nine coaches in the WCHA, who again have to find a way to shut him down.<\/p>\n
“To have a player of this caliber to come back to our game and not sign a pro contract is a real plus. We’re real pleased that he’s back.”<\/p>\n
But simply having Heatley back for at least one more college campaign isn’t going to be enough for the Badgers to win back-to-back MacNaughton Cups for the first time in school history.<\/p>\n
Nor will the combination of Heatley, David Hukalo and centerman Brad Winchester. Wisconsin needs to utilize its depth and show it’s not going to be a team dominated by the top line.<\/p>\n
“We’ve got good depth at forward; we’ve got mature depth at forward,” Sauer said. “Dany just adds to that by returning. He gives us a bonafide goal scorer and hopefully we can take advantage of it.”<\/p>\n
One of the knocks on Heatley last season was that he was too dependent on centerman Steve Reinprecht, who graduated as the runner-up for the Hobey Baker Award. Of course, the knock on Reinprecht in his campaign for Hobey was that he leaned too much on Heatley.<\/p>\n
Without Reinprecht on the top line, we’ll see very quickly if those claims were true.<\/p>\n
“I think that’s one of the reasons [Heatley] decided to come back — improvement, not only from a physical standpoint but maturity-wise,” Sauer said. “Now it’s a situation where he doesn’t have Steve working for him in the middle so I think he looks at that as a challenge. He’s a confident kid that’s ready to play and once we get going, things will be fine.”<\/p>\n
Winchester was a late addition to the Heatley-Hukalo line. Kent Davyduke and newcomer John Eichelberger were also candidates, Sauer said. But that line will need help from other lines being able to score some goals when opposing defenses key on them.<\/p>\n
“We need four or five guys to come through with 10 or more goals, and I think we have people that are capable of doing that in our lineup,” Sauer said. “I don’t want to sit back, and I thought at times last year we got into a mold, ‘Reino’s line’s going to score, so we don’t have to score on this shift.’<\/p>\n
“It’s our job as a staff this year to get that intensity going with each line that goes on the ice.”<\/p>\n