By the late stages of the third period Saturday afternoon at Ridder Arena, the Wisconsin Badgers had pulled away from the Gophers for a 5-1 victory en route to a split in the two-game series between two of the best teams in women’s college hockey.

But midway through the second period of a close game, the game pivoted on a freshman mistake. And in an unusual twist, the mistake was made by a member of the winning team.

With the Gophers up 1-0, back-to-back minor penalties on the Badgers gave the Gophers a two-man advantage for 52 seconds. The Gophers got some good looks at the Badgers’ net, but the Badgers were able to kill off the first penalty.

Although the Gophers had control of the puck in the Badgers’ zone, Badgers freshman defenseman Ava Murphy left the penalty box and skated to the Wisconsin bench. When her replacement, Lacey Eden, jumped on the ice, she soon found herself alone with the puck at center ice.

Eden scored on a breakaway for the shorthanded goal, and the tenor of the game was different from that point on. The Badgers added a power-play goal just over three minutes later to eventually take a 2-1 lead into the third period and held the upper hand the rest of the way.

Wisconsin coach Mark Johnson said the right play for Murphy would have been to skate hard into the Badgers’ zone and help defend.

“It gave them another 5 to 7 seconds on a 5-on-3,” Johnson said. “Those things are a learning opportunity.”

And in this case, a game-changer.

“Certainly the turning point in the game was their 5-on-3,” Gophers coach Brad Frost said. “A couple of Grade A (chances for the Gophers) and then they come back and score.

“We’ve done that to teams this yard and have been able to carry that momentum on. Unfortunately, that happened, then we gave up another one on the PK and just couldn’t find our footing the rest of the way.”

After a scoreless first period, Josefin Buoveng gave the Gophers a 1-0 lead at 2:55 of the second period, beating Badgers goaltender Ava McNaughton on a wrist shot from the left-wing circle. With goaltender Skylar Vetter playing well in goal, the Gophers appeared to be in good position to complete the sweep of their chief rival.

“I thought we were in great shape,” Frost said. “As soon as they got that shorty and the second one after, the moment just flipped. I felt we had it, or it was at 50-50 at worst. They gained some confidence out of it, we lose a little bit of it, and we’re swimming upstream the rest of the way.”

Other than Buoveng’s goal, the Badgers were able to keep the Gophers’ top line (Ella Huber and Abbey Murphy) in check. But the Gophers were not without their chances.

“In the third, it was a 3-1 game, we had kind of a wide-open net, and their D slides through (for the block),” Frost said. “So what happens? They come down and score. There’s just those key turning points in a game where you look back and say, ‘If we could have done this or we could have done that.’”

The loss snapped the Gophers’ unbeaten streak at 10 (9-0-1), sending them into the holiday break on a bit of a downer. They hadn’t faced defeat since being swept at No. 1 Ohio State on October 27-28.

“We’ve just played so solid and so consistent for a long time,’ Frost said. “Tonight was kind of that first time, in the third, that we just didn’t have that jump. We weren’t as aggressive as we normally are.

“But we’re not going to focus on the last 27 minutes of a hockey game.”

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