MADISON, Wis. — If Wisconsin’s Brendan Smith is to be a serious contender for this year’s Hobey Baker Award, the junior added a key line to his resume at Saturday’s Culver’s Camp Randall Classic.

After dominating the first 20 minutes of play in front of 55,031 fans at Camp Randall Stadium, Smith’s Badgers let momentum slip into the hands of visiting Michigan in the second and a good chunk of the third period as the Wolverines gained a 2-1 lead. But as the clock wound down, Michigan captain Chris Summers took a pair of untimely penalties in the closing minutes of the contest, allowing Smith to steal the show.

The junior from Mimico, Ont. sent Badger fans into a frenzy with two power-play goals that solidified his candidacy for college hockey’s most prestigious individual honor and leading WIsconsin to a 3-2 win.

“When a young player is on the ice, all they think about is winning the Stanley Cup or whatnot on the back door rink,” Smith said as Wisconsin students chanted his name in the background. “This was pretty damn close.”

Wisconsin outshot Michigan 13-6 in the opening frame, controlling the puck with ease and taking an early lead three minutes into the period when Jordy Murray knocked a rebound past Wolverines netminder Bryan Hogan.

Though the Badgers maintained momentum and threatened to extend the lead on several occasions, Michigan scratched its way back into the game when Scooter Vaughan slipped a puck past Scott Gudmandson late in the first period. Linemate Lindsay Sparks cycled the puck behind the net and sent a pass back to Vaughan in front of the Wisconsin net.

Michigan's Carl Hagelin celebrates linemate Kevin Brown's third-period goal that eluded Wisconsin goalie Scott Gudmandson and gave the Wolverines a 2-1 lead.

Freshman Kevin Lynch gave the visitors the lead midway through the third period. Lynch carried the puck up through the neutral zone and let loose just inside the blue line, surprising everyone in the stadium, including Gudmandson, who lost sight of the shot.

“Obviously the ice wasn’t too good, so just getting shots on net was our focus,” Lynch said. “Off of the faceoff we lost the draw, but it came out to Carl [Hagelin]. He gave it to me and I just held on to it and once I got across the blue line, I just let one go and it went in.”

Wisconsin coach Mike Eaves praised his team for their response to Lynch’s stunning goal. Instead of collapsing and letting the exuberant atmosphere within the stadium dwindle, the team bonded together on the bench behind its captains and leaders and set out to crack the Michigan defense that held them goalless for more than 51 minutes.

“A lot of times, you talk about the fact that a game is like trying to solve a riddle,” Eaves said. “You’ve got to find the answer to the riddle. We stayed with it. On the bench, guys were saying the right things. It wasn’t like they got quiet or they got down. We stayed with it and we had good leadership on the bench.”

Once Summers took his first penalty, a tripping call at the 14:18 mark of the third period, Eaves was confident he had solved that riddle with some review of Michigan’s penalty-killing strategy between periods.

“It had more to do with what Michigan was doing and trying to take advantage of what they were doing,” Eaves said. “We watched the first power play after the period and thought there was something we could do. We made an adjustment and we executed at a critical time.”

The Badgers used Michigan’s focus on Blake Geoffrion to their advantage, getting Smith open from close range twice, and he buried them both.

“It’s so exciting, I have to give credit to the power play,” Smith said of the tying goal. “Michael Davies threaded that through the lane so pretty. He’s so talented. Really the play was backdoor to Blake, but they took that away so I was able to get open.”

The victory could be a big one for Wisconsin, which Smith said is focused on trying to get to the top seed in the NCAA tournament. He admits that it will be tough to run down Miami and Denver from behind, but his coach believes the victory might just give them the momentum they need to do just that.

“We said at the beginning of the week that this could be an energizer for us as we head into the last part of our WCHA season,” Eaves said. “To win the game the way we did, it certainly has the potential of doing that. I think the guys will be really excited about coming to the rink next week and getting back into the WCHA race.”

A Camp Randall Tradition?

With the game such a rousing success, Eaves was asked in his post game press conference whether he would do it all again.

“I hope so,” Eaves said. “Scooter, the ice doctor here from the company that put the ice in, actually feels that doing it at the college level makes a lot more sense than the pros, because if you do it every four years, you’ve got a new crop of students that haven’t experienced it. That’s a pretty common-sense statement. After what happened tonight, I think we can get that upper part of the stadium full based on what happened here.”

If the game’s star, Brendan Smith, had a vote, he’d surely do it all again next year.

“Fifty-five thousand fans, you can hear them now,” Smith said as they continued to chant his name in anticipation of his exit through the tunnel to the Wisconsin locker room. “This is unbelievable; I have no words to describe it.”

Fries at the Bottom of the Bag

• Aside from the renowned Wisconsin bratwursts, the hottest seller at concession stands inside the stadium was a $6 souvenir travel mug filled with hot chocolate.

• The fan festival area inside the Badgers’ football practice facility was a heated and, therefore, popular place Saturday. The Hockey Hall of Fame had several of the NHL’s top awards on display, and there was a significant line to get pictures taken with the Hobey Baker Award.

The display from the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame featured vintage sweaters from Michigan and Wisconsin. The 1924 Badger sweater looked more like a maroon mock turtleneck with well-worn leather elbow patches, while the sweet-looking 1946 Wolverines sweater featured a snarling animal on the front and—get this—stripes of maize, blue and red on the shoulders.

No puck luck: Instead of giving errant biscuits to fans, security gathered them.

• Both Wisconsin goalies—Becca Ruegsegger in the women’s game and Scott Gudmandson in the men’s game—wore red and white knit hats over the top of their goalie helmets. The wind chill was in the single digits by the time Gudmandson took to the ice, making the winter headwear more of a necessity. Not so in the relative warmth of the afternoon women’s game. “The hat was more of a decorative thing,” Ruegsegger admitted.

• Cardinal and white were by far the most popular colors inside the stadium, with the combination of maize and blue a distant second. In third place was not the green of Bemidji State (which lost 6-1 to the Badgers in the women’s game) but the eye-popping blaze orange favored for cold-weather wear by so many Wisconsin deer hunters.

• We had a tie in the contest for favorite t-shirt seen on State Street before the game. We really liked the one with the map of Illinois that said “Baja Wisconsin.” But we’re not sure if we could rank that ahead of the one next to the “Wisconsin Nursing” and “Wisconsin Engineering” shirts that read “Wisconsin Undecided.”

• Facilities officials from the University of Minnesota were on hand Saturday getting a first-hand look at how the rink was put together and how to smoothly run an outdoor hockey event. Marc Ryan, one of Minnesota’s associate athletic directors, told INCH this week that the Golden Gophers are in the advanced planning stages of hosting a similar event at the new 50,000-seat TCF Bank Stadium in Minneapolis next season.

• Stadium security down on the field was unfortunately tight for some young fans at the game. The security personnel ran down every loose puck that came off the playing surface, ending any hope that kids might head home with a free souvenir and the memory of a lifetime.

Jess Myers contributed to this report.