Reliving Wisconsin’s overtime thriller win over Ohio State to make history Wisconsin won the rubber match with Ohio State to claim the 2025 NCAA Championship in a classic.
Eight is great. The Wisconsin Badgers women’s hockey team claimed its eighth national championship in program history on Sunday, notching its program-record 38th win of the 2024-25 season with a thrilling overtime win over the Ohio State Buckeyes.
Despite the record-setting season, an eighth championship was far from a guarantee for nearly 59 minutes of action.
Sunday’s NCAA Championship game was the third straight featuring both the Badgers and the Buckeyes, with each team holding a 1-0 win. The rubber match was a rollercoaster of highs and lows, starting with a power play opportunity in the first period. Wisconsin (38-1-2) looked to capture momentum by handing the nation’s most productive offense a five-on-four to grease the wheels.
Instead, Ohio State (29-8-3) won the defensive zone faceoff back to Joy Dunne, who went coast to coast through a murderer’s row of Wisconsin All-Americans to tuck a shorthanded goal past sophomore goaltender Ava McNaughton 13 seconds into the Badger power play.
The lead would only last 12 seconds. With the Badgers still on the power play, junior Laila Edwards gained the zone after the next faceoff and went right for Buckeye goalie Amanda Thiele. Edwards controlled the puck and pulled it around the front of the crease, waiting just long enough for Thiele to lose position before sending the puck into the back of the net for her fifth goal of the tournament. The goal gave Edwards her NCAA-leading 35th tally of the season, the first Badger to net at least 35 goals since Brianna Decker posted 37 back in 2012.
Despite quickly tying the game, Wisconsin was still waiting to lock in. The crisp play we’ve been accustomed to was lacking, as Badger players sent errant passes across the rink and had trouble clearing the defensive zone all night. A big part of that was Ohio State’s dominance in the neutral zone, consistently making it tough for the Badgers to generate momentum and rarely allowing them to cleanly gain the offensive zone.
It was one of these errant passes that dug another hole for the Badgers, when Edwards looked to pass the puck back to a teammate through the neutral zone, but didn’t look fully committed. The pass ran out of steam and fell directly to Ohio State’s Sloane Matthews, who took it in stride and sniped a goal past McNaughton from the left circle to give the Buckeyes a 2-1 lead after the first period.
The second period didn’t start much better. Ohio State won the opening draw and immediately got it in deep before Emma Peschel wound up a slapshot on a loose puck to beat McNaughton over her left shoulder, giving Ohio State a 3-1 lead. Peschel’s goal came from nearly the same spot as Matthews’s first-period goal and beat McNaughton the same way: hard, high, and across the grain.
The two-goal deficit matched the largest of the season for Wisconsin, which also came against Ohio State back in November. Needing to find a way to claw back into the game, the Badgers called upon a couple of their grittiest players to make it happen.
Watching their championship hopes start to slip away, juniors Caroline Harvey and Kirsten Simms crossed the blue line with Harvey dropping the puck to Simms. Simms attempted a tough-angle shot blocked by Thiele, but chased down the rebound, sweeping the puck over to Harvey as Simms was falling to the ice. Harvey did the rest, slamming it home through traffic and cutting the deficit to one.
The second period came to a close with the Badgers down 3-2. Wisconsin ramped up the pressure and continued to chase a goal in the third, but Thiele and the Buckeye defense held firm. Time was running out and the Badgers were in desperation mode. McNaughton vacated the crease with nearly two minutes remaining, and at nearly the same time, Ohio State started making mistakes that left the door open for Wisconsin.
The Buckeyes made a bad change and got caught with too many on the ice with 1:50 remaining, giving the Badgers a power play and a chance to pull even with two extra skaters on the ice for the rest of regulation. The Wisconsin onslaught continued, but they still couldn’t find a way past Thiele.
Desperate to keep the puck out of the net, the Buckeyes packed it in and put bodies all around the crease. A puck finally made it past Thiele, and former Badger Maddi Wheeler was the last line of defense. Wheeler instinctively grabbed at the loose puck in the crease, covering it with her glove and pulling it into her body before it squirted out to the side and away from danger.
Wisconsin head coach Mark Johnson challenged the play, and a replay review determined the covering motion constituted a delay of game penalty, awarding the Badgers a penalty shot with 18.9 seconds left.
What happened next can only be described as the stuff legends are made of.
During the timeout, Johnson prodded his team, asking, “Who wants it?” Whether she did or not probably didn’t matter, as every Badger on the bench muttered towards Simms before the junior enthusiastically shot her hand in the air.
It only made sense, the prolific goal scorer and maybe the fiercest competitor on the team, with the entire season on her tape. She’s also come through in big moments before, scoring the game-winning NCAA Championship goal in a 1-0 win over Ohio State in 2023.
Under the enormous pressure of a championship-saving do-or-die penalty shot, Simms calmly advanced the puck around the right circle. She showed off some silky glove work, bringing the puck from right to left across the crease to set up Thiele for a backhand before pulling it all the way across to her forehand at the last second. That move left Thiele flat on the ice with nothing but net in front of Simms to make it 3-3 and pull even for the first time since the first period.
Rejuvenated by the Simms goal, the Badgers began showing signs of life in overtime that had been lacking for nearly 60 minutes of regulation hockey. Wisconsin immediately brought pressure, and it just felt like the free hockey wouldn’t last long. The Badgers were given an extra life, and they weren’t keen on letting it go to waste.
Just over two and a half minutes into overtime, redshirt senior Lacey Eden crossed the blue line and charged through the right circle toward the Buckeye goal. Eden had a clean look and put the puck on the net, but it was pushed aside by Thiele.
Joy Dunne attempted to clear the puck for the Buckeyes, but Simms came crashing down in a race for the rebound. Simms won the race, getting her stick down and redirecting the puck underneath Dunne and past a sprawling Thiele to score the second championship-winning goal of her career and send the Badger bench, including the typically stoic Mark Johnson, into a frenzy.
It was a legendary game for Simms, one that will etch her name in Badger lore for the rest of history. She’s solidified herself as one of Wisconsin’s greatest sports heroes with two highlight-reel goals and a highlight-reel assist to boot, and for her trouble,s Simms was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player. She was joined on the All-Tournament team by Laila Edwards, Caroline Harvey, and Ava McNaughton.
You just couldn’t craft a more perfect storybook moment – the comeback, the late penalty shot, the epic overtime winner. I joked earlier in the year that the Badgers might have to create some of their own adversity to prepare them for the Frozen Four, but they’ve proven their mettle time and again, and rose to the occasion on a day where they didn’t always play their best hockey.
Not to be lost on Badger fans, winning their record eighth championship on their archrival’s ice at Ridder Arena made the special moment a little extra nice. Of all the squads Mark Johnson has put together in his career, spanning 667 wins to this point (the most in women’s collegiate hockey), the 2024-25 team might just be the best. It’s a team that:
- Won the most games in program history (38)
- Scored the most goals in program history (221)
- Featured the Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award winner as the most dominant player in women’s college hockey (Casey O’Brien)
- Boasted the NCAA leading goal scorer (Laila Edwards)
- Was backstopped by the HCA Goaltender of the Year (Ava McNaughton)
- Had the three top point producers in the sport with over 70 points each (O’Brien, Kirsten Simms, Laila Edwards)
- Lost only once in regulation and once in a shootout all season (both to No. 2 Ohio State)
It was a banner year for women’s hockey in Madison, literally. Seeing the joy and jubilation made it all worth it, especially when O’Brien and Simms locked eyes and shared a moment together on the ice. Being so dominant all season, I can’t imagine the pressure on the entire team, but those two in particular. Both were Patty Kazmaier finalists last year, and both upped their game this season to post back-to-back 70+ point seasons.
Living up to that standard each and every night meant a championship was the expectation, and anything less would be a failure for a team that dominated every weekend for much of the past two years. Thankfully, it was Kirsten Simms who wanted it when push came to shove and refused to take no for an answer, delivering one of the most dramatic championships you’ll ever see.
The championship-winning Badgers received a warm welcome home Monday night with a celebration at LaBahn Arena. Fans filed in to support their Badgers with lines forming outside the arena an hour before the event kicked off.
While Ridder Arena was swarmed by Badger fans over the weekend, last night gave fans a more intimate venue to acknowledge the team and give the outgoing seniors one more special send-off at LaBahn. If you’re interested, the championship celebration was recorded and posted to the Wisconsin Badgers YouTube channel for anybody who may have missed out.
