First half has seen familiar shortcomings for Wisconsin Badgers men's hockey team

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UW is 7-8-1 through 16 games, the same .469 winning percentage as it had at this point last season before it swept Michigan State at home to wrap up 2018.

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This is the Milewski article that generated a bunch of buzz on badger hockey twitter. This is the most mind-boggling part of the whole piece:

"Defensive-zone play has been subpar at times. Recently, UW has been caught flat-footed at the start of games.

“It just has been frustrating for the players and frustrating for us as coaches to watch three games in a row where you just don’t come out of the gate and have a lot of energy into your game,” Badgers coach Tony Granato said. “You’re sitting back watching and waiting.”
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This tells me a lot about the players and the coaches. I knew that defensive stuff was going to be an issue, I didn't think it would be this bad, but the lack of energy was not something I expected.

Like I was saying in the other post yesterday, this team lacks something. It is an extraordinary collection of individual talents, but they just don't play well together. There aren't enough "glue" guys on this roster, very few grinders, guys with no name who are going to be here 3-4 years.

Eaves' last two natty teams ('06, '10) were built around those no-name guys who, yes, made it to the NHL eventually, but weren't necessarily headed there before their college development turned them into the types of guys GMs wanted in The Show. There really isn't anybody tough on this team. Guys aren't throwing their bodies into the corners to muck for pucks, holding the zone, blocking shots, grinding their asses off every game.

Goaltending isn't the issue that I thought it would be. Lebedeff isn't an All-American caliber player, but he's better than his numbers indicate and is getting no help on his backside and defensive mistakes are killing this team. We have very offense-oriented D-men and those kinds of guys are great, but they aren't balanced out with true two-way guys or the hard-nosed defensive minded player who the goalie knows has his six and can rely on to not screw up in the defensive zone.
 
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