After a relaxing week off, the Wisconsin women’s hockey team is rested up and ready to hit the ice again this Friday, when they will head out to the small town of Vail, Colo., for an NCAA women’s hockey tournament and compete with two other top women’s hockey programs in the nation.

Wisconsin’s first game of the tournament will fall on Friday night when they take on Northeastern, a team who they haven’t faced since the 2010-2011 season, when the Badgers came away with a 7-2 win.  Northeastern (5-6-1) has not had the most successful start to their 2013-2014 schedule, but Wisconsin head coach Mark Johnson isn’t about to overlook them.

“Northeastern has played much better than their record would lead you to believe,” Johnson said.  “They have played a lot of ranked teams this season and have played very close to them in those matchups.”

And when you take the Huskies’ stat sheets into account, it’s hard to argue with Johnson.

Aside from a 6-1 defeat at the hands of Boston College last Sunday, Northeastern has proven itself a tough contender in most games this season.  Just two weeks ago the Huskies put up a notable fight against Boston University, pushing the No. 1 ranked team in the Hockey East conference into overtime, where BU barely managed to pull out a 3-2 victory.

This game between the two Boston teams is most likely something the Badgers have already taken into account, as they will be playing BU for themselves for the second game of the Vail tournament.  The Badgers (8-2-0) will have their work cut out for them Saturday night, when they take on BU (9-1-1), whose only loss came when they split a series with Robert Morris University back in mid-October.  But Johnson says he’s excited about the matchup.

“BU is a great program. They have quite a few impressive wins this season and always seem to make games interesting,” Johnson said.

Wisconsin and Boston’s last meeting was two years ago when the Badgers won both games in the series with seemingly no problem (3-0, 6-1).  Redshirt junior Brittany Ammerman was a sophomore on the team then, and remembers BU as a different team than what they’ve seen this year.

“Yeah, we beat Boston last time we played them, but that was a long time ago,” Ammerman said.  “This is a different team, who has been playing very well this year.”

Ammerman went on to say that both teams Wisconsin will see this weekend are a force to be reckoned with, and that hopefully having a week off will give the Badgers the edge they will need.  But the forward mentioned that another advantage of theirs is the success they’ve had on offense, which is something the entire teams continues to contribute to.

“Offensively we have just been firing on all cylinders this year, and we have been lucky enough to have production from a lot of young girls,” Ammerman said.

But both Northeastern and Boston have tough offenses of their own, and the Badgers know it.  Senior goalie Alex Rigsby mentioned that Wisconsin has a solid defense and effective penalty kill, and will come prepared to shut down both teams’ scoring opportunities.

But Wisconsin doesn’t have to talk itself up – UW’s record speaks for itself.  With the exception of a series with Minnesota, Wisconsin has blown through its competition so far this year, making each win look relatively easy.  Apparently this hasn’t been lost on opponents, because Rigsby has noticed a change in the other teams’ motivation levels, and is anticipating it showing during the games.

“It’s funny because last year we didn’t have the target on our backs at all and this year people are gunning for us,” Rigsby said.  “After our experiences last year I can tell you that when a team has a target on their back their opponent plays much better.”

As true as this might be, coach Johnson has confidence in his team, and believes his girls have what it takes to pull off a win both nights of the tournament, and bring the gold back to Madison.

“The key to success is really just playing Wisconsin hockey,” Johnson said.  “We are going to go out there and play our game and we are confident if we can do that we will have a chance to win every game.”