Madison, Wis. – Slava Demin's goal at 1:42 of overtime handed the No. 8 Denver Pioneers (12-4-2, 4-4-0-0) a 4-3 win against the Wisconsin Badgers (8-9-3, 4-3-3-1) and their fifth-straight victory on Saturday at the Kohl Center.
 
The Pioneers trailed 2-0 early in the first period, but responded with a pair of game-tying goals and the overtime winner to move their non-conference record to 8-0-2 and NCAA overtime record to 3-1-2.  Denver outshot Wisconsin, 40-16.
 
"Wisconsin came out hard as we expected," Richard and Kitzia Goodman Head Coach David Carle said. "We were on our heels to start the game…that's the next evolution for our team is to win on Friday night, have an opportunity to sweep on Saturday and really take the fight to them. It took them getting two goals on us for us to wake up a little bit, but again, credit to us, we were the better team for two and a half periods - possessing pucks, getting pucks to the net, having a wide margin in the shot count. We had a lot of chances that we could have buried earlier and I give our guys a lot of credit. We stuck with it, our bench was real positive, we didn't get down and we just continued to work." 
 
After falling 6-3 on Friday, Wisconsin started the game with a surge of offense capped by two goals in 28 seconds. The Badgers struck first with Dominick Mersch's deflection on Tyler Inamoto's shot, then buried again when Brock Caufield took advantage of a Pioneers' line change to make it 2-0 at 5:16 of the first. Denver cut the lead less than three minutes later as Ian Mitchell fed Demin for a one-timer from the point, yielding a rebound for Tyler Ward's second goal of the series. Jarid Lukosevicius and Brett Stapley nearly equalized before the end of the period, but both shots hit the post.
 
Erich Fear tied it 2-2 at 5:25 of the second with a one-timer off a pass from Jaakko Heikkinen. The Badgers regained the lead on the power play at 10:52 of the middle frame when Matthew Freytag used Will Johnson as a screen and sent a shot from the top of the circles past Filip Larsson. As the period progressed so did the intensity, resulting in a pair of coincidental roughing minors before the second intermission.
 
Denver tied the game for the second time in the night at 7:24 of the third period as Liam Finlay carried the puck into the zone before finding Cole Guttman for a wrist shot through the five-hole of Jack Berry. The 3-3 score held through the Badgers' late flurry, which included a prime scoring chance for Tarek Baker with 2:30 remaining in regulation.
 
After receiving a pass from Finlay as he entered the zone, Stapley dangled toward the net before finding Demin in the high slot for the game-winner.
 
Larsson made 13 saves. The Pioneers finished 0/4 on the power play and 3/4 on the penalty kill.
 
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