The UW-River Falls Falcons women’s hockey team defeated the UW-Eau Claire Blugolds 4-3 in sudden death overtime on Wednesday night at Hunt Arena in River Falls.

It was the Falcons’ 24^th straight victory and a new conference record. With just one more regular season game to play, this was the penultimate game before perfection.

After the first 5:00 of play, there was only one shot on goal apiece, but things picked up rapidly. A Falcon breakaway towards the goal was denied, and less than a minute later, Eau Claire took the lead at 1-0.

This deficit lasted until the back half of the period when River Falls got the puck behind the defense and streaked headlong down the ice and slapped it in to tie it up. A tripping penalty shortly thereafter gave the Falcons an opportunity to add on, but the Blugolds’ penalty kill was effective, and the score after one period was 1-1 with UWRF controlling the board for shots on goal at 9-3.

River Falls started period two with a power play incurred by Eau Claire for hooking, and the black birds responded by taking the lead on a deep shot from #2. Just 90 seconds later, they did it again. However, the score was negated by a questionable high sticking call that looked more like medium sticking at best.

With 5:00 remaining in the second period, Eau Claire incurred another penalty, this time for holding. The Falcons could not convert on the power play for the second time in the period, and shortly after coming back to full strength, the Blugolds tied it up at 2-2 on their eighth shot on goal of the game.

UWRF wasn’t content to go into the break tied up though, and they kept pressing. At 1:30, a battle for the puck in front of the net resulted in a Falcon goal and they took a 3-2 lead going into the third period. A flurry of shots on goal by the Blugolds came at the end of the period pushing their total out to 13, but the home team still outshot them by a margin at 21.

The third period chugged along at a medium pace, but midway through the frame, Eau Claire sneaked one in to tie it up. Although the home team seemed in control the whole game, it became a next goal wins scenario more and more as the minutes wound off the clock. The closer it came to all zeros, the more the precariousness of extending the record seemed to be at stake.

Then the buzzer rang. A two-minute intermission was followed by a 5:00 3 on 3 sudden death.

The efficiency that had been working for the Blugolds wasn’t enough to sustain them in overtime. Of course, it’s possible to win despite being consistently outshot by two or three times as much, but it isn’t likely.

Overtime lasted for almost 3:00, and in that time the Falcons had control of the puck for what felt like 2:30 of it. They outshot the Blugolds 5-1, while Megan Goodreau did it again for the Falcons, sinking her second goal in a row for River Falls and propelling her team to a conference record 24-0 on the season.

On National Girls and Women in Sports Day, a women’s hockey team doing something that has never been done before is a fantastic story, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. In order to understand where you are, you have to know where you came from, and where these young women come from is right here in our own backyard.

To tell their whole story, though, first we need to back up 25 years to a time when UWRF didn’t have a girls hockey program. Head Coach Joe Cranston was hired to run a team that didn’t exist yet. The first year, the girls only won three games, and that was the last time they had a losing season.

Since then, the UWRF program has become a benchmark for success.

They have won their conference regular season or conference tournament, or both, for the last 14 years in a row. They've been to the NCAA tournament 12 out of the last 13 years. They were ranked first in the nation at this time last year, they were ranked number one in the country the year before that for a while and right now, they’re right back where they once belonged, ranked number one nationally.

“We keep it rolling, because we work hard, we're out, we see everybody play and we identify players really early. When you talk to the other D3 schools, and the D1 schools over in Minnesota, they refer to us as the D1 of the D3 because we are so ahead of the game usually,” Cranston said. “We generally play more players than other teams, which means we have more depth. So, like this year, I have six just unbelievable seniors that will graduate, and every year we'll graduate two or three All-Americans, but we don't ever have a rebuilding year because the kids coming back have all had a lot of experience and they were called upon to do more than just fill a role on a fourth line.”

Being an All-American first of all means you’re 1^st Team All-Conference. Then you get put on the All-American ballot, and coaches nationwide vote to determine who makes it. Right now, the Falcons have three of the top six leading points scorers in the nation in Maddie McCollins (1), Megan Goodreau (3) and Alex Hantge (6).

With so much success over such a long period of time, it begs the question of how they keep doing it over and over. Coach Cranston says the answer lies in the adage of quality over quantity.

The Falcons’ program generally brings in anywhere from four to eight kids a year, and that's what they graduate each spring. Some schools bring in 15 or 16 a year, but he says they take a lot of pride at UWRF in the fact that they bring in about half of that.

“We get out early, we identify players, we make a commitment to a kid and they make one to us. Instead of you know, offering them a spot or offering a try out, we tell them you're going to play. I just think that commitment we make to them, and they make it to us, is a big difference,” Cranston said. “We don't over recruit, and that's always been our philosophy. We don't want a whole bunch of extra kids sitting in the stands. We have good enough athletes where I could move a defenseman up to forward or I could move it or vice versa if someone gets hurt.”

The other interesting tangent to the culture of success alluded to earlier is that they’ve curated this elite program from home grown, local talent.

“We do a little bit of scouting nationally. One girl on the team is from California, we've had a few Canadians over the years and, you know, once in a while we'll have a North Dakota kid, but primarily we're 90% Minnesota and 10% Wisconsin,” Cranston said.

Cranston says a big reason for this is that the Wisconsin programs aren’t as well developed, and the premier athletes they produce almost all go D1. Even so, this obviously hasn’t stopped the UWRF women’s hockey program from developing into a dynasty. Yet, with so much success, there’s still one thing they haven’t done, win an NCAA Championship.

With 24 straight victories to open the season, Coach Cranston says they’re pretty much locked into a one seed.

“On paper, we were better the last two years, but performance wise, we haven't been 24 and 0 the last two years. I think we lost one game two years ago, and then last year we lost two or three, but this team's really good defensively, and we’ve got some really good scorers,” Cranston said. “So, I got a good team. I don't know if it's my best team, but we definitely have a good team, and we just keep plugging away and going one game at a time.”

After coaching for so many years and having a near 100% success rate of garnering winning seasons, Cranston says he’s still continuously impressed with his athletes.

"It's crazy. If somebody would have told me 25 years ago that after 25 years of being here, the skill level and the level of play would still be getting better, I would have probably thought, ‘that’s not possible,’ but it continues to get better,” Cranston said. “I used to have really good players on my team 10 years ago that wouldn't even be able to make this team.”

For the Falcons players like Holly Eckers, this most recent record setting victory holds some extra meaning as it came on a day that celebrates women athletes.

“It means so much to me to be able to set another record, and it means even more to be able to do so on a day that recognizes female athletes. It is so important to appreciate the hard work and dedication that female athletes put into their sports, no matter at what age,” Eckers said. “Being able to be a role model for younger girls is something I strive to do, and hopefully it will allow them to see their own potential and enjoy success in their sport as much as I have been able to.” 

With one more game left before making the conference season perfect, the girls know that they’re just getting started as they have aspirations of a NCAA championship. This may not be the “best” team that UWRF has ever fielded, but they are clearly the most successful. Another trip for the Falcons program to the frozen four could very well be in the cards, and with it comes a chance to reach an echelon of success that no team in the history of this elite program has never reached.

The Falcons’ next step towards perfection comes on Saturday when they will travel to Eau Claire for a rematch of this dramatic overtime victory against the Blugolds. The puck drops at 2 p.m. at Hobbs Ice Arena.