This weekend, the No. 5 Wisconsin Badger women’s hockey team will face off against the team that sits in the cellar of the WCHA, Bemidji State. The Beavers enter Madison with a 1-21-2 record in conference and are 32 points behind Wisconsin in the standings.
The last time these teams met, the Badgers opened the series by putting the puck in the net seven times. The next day Bemidji’s senior goalie Emily Brookshaw turned back 50 Wisconsin shots on goal and earned her squad a 0-0 tie. Thus, despite Bemidji State’s record, Wisconsin will not look past the Beavers.
“My theme has always been it doesn’t matter who you play or where you are playing them, you better be ready to play because the day has come when anybody can beat anybody,” head coach Mark Johnson said. “You look at Bemidji’s record this year compared to last or North Dakota’s compared to last year. If you blink, these teams can beat you.”
The Beavers come in with the worst offense in the WCHA. They have scored 19 goals in 24 conference games, and freshman forward Annie Bauerfeld is the only player on their team who has scored 10 points.
Brookshaw ranks fifth in the league in save percentage but is allowing almost three goals per game. This results mostly from the fact that she sees an average of more than 32 shots each night.
The Badgers have a 33-1-2 record all-time against Bemidji State and have never lost to them in Madison. Wisconsin also leads the NCAA in women’s hockey attendance with over 2,000 fans per game, 700 more per game than Minnesota, which ranks second.
This series comes between two of Wisconsin’s most important series of the season. Last week they visited first-place Duluth and next weekend they will head to Minneapolis to take on second-place Minnesota. The players and coaches, however, are wary of looking past Bemidji State.
“It’s getting tense,” junior forward Kayla Hagen said. “We can kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel. I think our excitement level is staying pretty high, so hopefully we’re going to run Bemidji over, get into the playoffs and keep the train going.”
The Badgers still control their own destiny in terms of getting second place in the WCHA but will need help to win the conference. If Duluth is swept by St. Cloud State in two weeks and the Badgers win their final four games, they would share the regular season title.
Wisconsin has a 9-1 record in the 2008 calendar year and in Mark Johnson’s tenure has a 90-14-5 record after Jan. 1.
“Our job is to continue to prepare and get ourselves in position that we’re playing good every night, because once we get up to Minnesota and then it becomes playoffs, and if you’re not playing well or if you don’t have a good night, your season could end rather quickly,” Johnson said.
The puck drops at 2:07 p.m. Friday at the Kohl Center. Saturday has the same start time, but the game will be played at the Eagle’s Nest in Verona.
