The Badger Hockey season started this past weekend with two wins against Lindenwood. That means it’s time for Walk on Fan’s preview of the 2025-2026 season!
Last year, Wisconsin followed a resurgent first season under Mike Hastings with a season to forget. Can Hastings recreate the magic of his first season, or will the Badgers’ season end in disappointment again?
Roster Breakdown
Compared to last year, the Badgers have a younger team with more upside to their roster. Their only major loss from last year is Ryland Mosley, last year’s second in points. The team has 9 new players, including 7 freshmen and 2 transfers. Most importantly, they have two new goaltenders: freshman Daniel Hauser and transfer Eli Pulver. From the first series, it appears Hauser will be the primary goaltender going forward. The two most exciting Badgers from last year are still on the team in Quinn Finley and Logan Hensler. The team should be more complete around them, leading to slightly elevated expectations compared to last year.
Schedule Breakdown
USCHO had the Badgers ranked #20 going into the season. That might seem like an improvement over last year, if it weren’t for the 5 Big Ten hockey squads ranked above the Badgers. That means we are expected to finish 6th in the Big Ten, right where we finished last year. With a loaded Big Ten, the Badgers’ schedule has 20 games out of 33 being against ranked opponents. The silver lining to the schedule is that the Badgers have no ranked non-conference teams scheduled. The only exception to that is the Kwik Trip Holiday Face-Off, where they could face a ranked opponent in the second game.
The first real test of the season comes against Minnesota at home the weekend of Halloween. Assuming the Badgers can make it to 6-0-0 up to that point, a sweep of Minnesota at home could propel Wisconsin into the top 10 of the rankings and give them a cushion against the remaining schedule. The most important stretch of the schedule will come in the middle of the season, where we have a series at Michigan St (Big Ten favorite and #2 in the rankings), a series at Notre Dame, the Kwik Trip Holiday Face-Off, a series at home against Alaska Anchorage, and then a home series against Michigan State. The second game of the Face-Off could be against either Western Michigan or Boston College. If against Western Michigan (the #1 team in the rankings), then the Badgers will play 5 of those 10 games against the current #1 and #2 teams in the country. The schedule doesn’t let up after that, with 6 more Big Ten series to finish the season. With where the Badgers sit, my prediction is that they go 22-10-2 and end up 3rd in the Big Ten and an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament.
Make sure to check out the Badger Hockey squad in an exhibition game tonight against the US Under-18 team!
Want more Walk On Fan?
Check out Tuesday’s Basketball post welcoming Brad Davison back to the Badgers!
Follow us on Twitter (or X) @here!
Follow us on Bluesky here!
This article was written by Jordan Longseth and edited by Hayden Breene