Another impressive performance by a Wisconsin men’s hockey goaltender who ranks fourth nationally in goals-against-average and sixth in save percentage was in doubt for a moment when he left the ice with a trainer in warmups. A misstep, slip, and fall nearly led to a lineup change, but Alexis Cournoyer assured head coach Mike Hastings he was prepared to play.
No. 1 Wisconsin’s netminder stepped on a puck in warmups, fell to the ice, and went back to a training room after the Badgers’ (8-0-1, 4-0-1 Big Ten) pregame skate. With just minutes before Hastings had to submit his starting lineup, Cournoyer brimmed with confidence despite the circumstances.
“I told [Hastings] I’m fine, a-hundred percent,” the Trois-Riviéres, Quebec native recalled. “I asked Andy Hrodey, our trainer, and I was like ‘Am I fine? and he was like, ‘Yeah.’ I’m like, ‘All right, give me some meds and I’ll go back in there.”
The young man suffered a “big bruise,” but seemingly only to his body, not his ego, as the Cornell transfer took the incident in stride, joking, “I might have to call my dad later. Tell him to teach me to skate again.”
Hastings said Cournoyer’s reaction to the situation “shows a lot about him.”
“It’d be easy to say, ‘You know what? I don’t think I’m 100%,’” the fourth-year Badgers head coach said in a postgame interview. “He said, ‘I’m good,’ and then he went out and played the way he played.”
Cournoyer again played spectacularly as he helped UW continue building a reputation for its vaunted defense, even bouncing back from another on-ice mishap early in Friday’s game.
“Just shows the kids’ mental toughness,” Hastings remarked.