In the final home series for the University of Wisconsin women’s hockey team, coach Mark Johnson and his seniors will put sentimentality on the back burner as they pursue Minnesota for the top spot in the WCHA rankings in the last weekend of regular season play.
Playing host to last place Bemidji State, the Badgers will need a misstep from rivals Minnesota to capture the top spot in both the national and WCHA polls. The Gophers, who are preparing for a home-and-away matchup with the feisty Huskies of Saint Cloud, hold a slight edge over Wisconsin in both the national and WCHA rankings.
For seniors Jessie Vetter, Erika Lawler, Angie Keseley, Rachel Bible, Kayla Hagen and Alycia Matthews this weekend marks the final home series of a storied four-year career that has produced more wins than other team in the country.
Lawler, who along with teammates Vetter, Meghan Duggan and Hillary Knight was named as one of 43 finalists for the Patty Kazmaier Award this week, noted the weekend will be special, but ultimately just a pair of hockey games.
“It’s really weird, obviously, being a senior,” Lawler said. “The years have definitely flown by and it’s definitely going to be a special day for us seniors — maybe a little emotional. Hopefully we have a lot more season to play after that, and I think that’s really what we’re going to be focusing on. And us seniors hopefully really [will be] working hard to make the season last as long as we possibly can.”
Bemidji State, who limps to the Kohl Center with 6-21-5 mark, is coming off a split last weekend with Saint Cloud State that included a shootout win and 4-1 loss. The Beavers, whose lopsided record is supplemented by an extremely young roster, rely on talented sophomore wingers Erin Cody and Erin Johnson as well as freshman center Kaylee Keys.
Junior winger Meghan Duggan expects Bemidji State to follow suit of other WCHA teams that have adapted a conservative style in hopes of muzzling the Badger’s explosive offense.
“I think [Bemidji is] going to be similar to a couple teams we’ve played this year in terms of their defensive zone.” Duggan said. “Usually they tend to box it up in their D-zone, and try to get us to work the outside and don’t give us much in the middle. I think if we just keep doing what we’re doing, we’ve seen that a few times this season, so we should be fine.”
As the Badgers and Beavers collide this weekend, they do so at opposite ends of the WCHA power structure. The Badgers enter the series with proving themselves as the top team nation as the only goal, while the Beavers hope this series with offer a glimpse of what their young team can do in the future. Duggan, who knows all there are many people waiting for Badgers to looks past Bemidji, insists the Badgers will provide an impressive encore for it’s six seniors and Johnson, who leaves this spring to prepare for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. Johnson will be back to coach the Badgers in 2010-11.
“Coaches are going to harp on that and obviously the media harps on that kind of stuff, just, ‘Oh, can they focus and get past these two games because playoffs are just around the corner?'” Duggan said. “Coach has been putting it in our minds all week — we can’t have any type of bumps in the road and we can’t look past this game. So, I think that’s kind of fresh in everyone’s minds — that we can’t look past these games — so I think we’re going to come out strong Friday and Saturday.”
The Badgers have expressed great resilience all season, in particular an inherent ability to play through distractions, and this series should be no different as the team hopes to fight through the emotions of the final home games for seniors and Coach Johnson. Assistant coach Tracey Cornell sees this as the first in a long-line of tests the Badger’s will face as they fight to win a national championship.
“This is a great dress rehearsal, as coach was talking about earlier this week.” Cornell said. “Just playing with a sense of desperation, setting the tempo, playing our game–playing hungry that’s our goal this weekend.”
