The Badgers are hoping to make a postseason run starting this week.
The 2023-24 Wisconsin Badgers men’s hockey season culminates with a berth in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2021, and only their second appearance since 2013.
Considering the state of affairs before this season, it’s hard to not call this season a success before stepping onto the ice for their first-round game against Quinnipiac on Friday. Since being hired in March 2023, Mike Hastings and his staff re-established a culture that seemed to be missing in Madison.
The arrival of Coach Hastings set a new standard. Remember, Hastings is pretty fresh off back-to-back Frozen Fours in 2021 and 2022 at Minnesota State. In his previous 25 seasons as a head coach, Hastings’ teams have never posted a losing record, something the Badgers did in five of Tony Granato’s seven seasons at the helm.
This Wisconsin team (26-11-2, 16-7-1 B1G) doubled the win total from the previous year while adding ten more conference wins. The 2021-22 season was even worse, amassing only ten total wins on the campaign.
The logical way to determine a person or team’s success is by comparing the results to the expectations. The B1G coaches picked Wisconsin to finish fifth in the conference with a roster that largely mirrored the 2022-23 team that finished dead last and 16 points behind the next team, save for a few newcomers brought in by Hastings. They instead finished second, two points behind first-place Michigan State, and had a chance to overtake the Spartans in the season’s final series. That speaks to the instant success of player development under the new staff, or at the very least a better ability to put players in a position to succeed.
Another measure of success is how a team plays against the best competition a league has to offer, another area in the 2023-24 Badgers have performed admirably. Wisconsin posted a 10-6-1 record against ranked teams, including a stretch of six ranked wins over three weeks in the first month of the season that saw the Badgers ascend to No. 1 in the USCHO rankings. The previous two Badger teams combined to go 11-38-5 against ranked opposition dating back to 2021.
One negative mark for first-year head coach Mike Hastings is struggling to beat the teams they are supposed to beat. The Ohio State Buckeyes finished last in the B1G by a significant margin, yet spent the last month of the season being a thorn in the Badgers’ side. The Buckeyes swept then-No. 4 Wisconsin in Columbus late in the season when the Badgers needed at least a split to get an inside track toward a B1G title. The Buckeyes also bounced the Badgers from the B1G tournament by becoming the first seven-seed to upset a two-seed in the short history of the conference tourney. The struggling Buckeyes looked like the 1984-85 Edmonton Oilers when they faced the Badgers, going 4-1 against Wisconsin in the last month.
As sports fans, we are prone to recency bias. We live in a “what have you done for me lately?” kind of world, and it’s easy to remember the frustrating losses to the Buckeyes. But this is a team that spent much of the year ranked in the top five following a decade of barely achieving mediocrity. The early B1G exit was a blemish on an otherwise bright season that includes an NCAA Tournament berth announced Sunday night and a Mike Richter Award finalist in senior goaltender Kyle McClellan.
The Badgers earned the hockey equivalent of a two-seed in March Madness. They were aptly punished for their struggles against Ohio State, drawing what can only be described as the “group of death,” featuring ECAC champion and defending national champion Quinnipiac as well as the top overall seed, Boston College.
Personal note: I’ll be honest, I wish the Badgers were punished more for the Ohio State losses. They were essentially considered the worst No. 2 seed and thrown into Boston College’s region. If they fell further a bit further and were the third team added to a different region the postseason likely wouldn’t look so daunting. But hey, any given game!
It’s fair to ask if Wisconsin fans should really be happy just making the NCAA Tournament. Some people will say Badger fans should never be content just being in the mix. To them, I say look at the last ten years. I promise you Badger fans expect to be represented in Frozen Fours not just on the women’s side, but in men’s hockey as well. The process usually takes time, and the results under Hastings in year one are certainly expediting the expectations of Badger fans everywhere.
The standard of what success looks like in Madison will continue to rise, but in isolation, this has been an incredible one-year turnaround. This staff has been on the job for less than a year at the time of this article’s posting. They have yet to experience one full recruiting cycle in Madison, and Hastings himself sang the praises of what the program has to offer when he accepted the job.
Hastings’ exact words were, “Badger hockey has a lot going for it — great alums, fans, facilities, tradition, a terrific campus and city. I can’t wait to get to Madison and start working with our team on building a winning culture on and off the ice.”
Hastings’ inaugural season in Madison is an objective success regardless of what happens this weekend in Providence, and considering his track record, there is no reason to believe this season isn’t just a small indication of things to come with a winning culture already taking root again in Madison. That being said, a couple of wins sure wouldn’t hurt!