After a month on the road, the Wisconsin women’s hockey team returned to the LaBahn Arena Friday afternoon, where it came away with a 7-2 victory against Bemidji State University, stretching its win streak to 13 games.

“It was just so nice to have our own fans supporting us,” junior forward Katy Josephs said of their return.

That excitement lead Wisconsin to its first lead right away as Josephs found the back of the net about a minute and a half into the first period, apparently igniting a fire under the rest of the Wisconsin bench.  About halfway through the period Brittany Ammerman took a slap shot from the hash marks, netting the Badgers’ second goal, only to have the Beavers respond by racking one up themselves two minutes later.

The second period started off with a goal by Bemidji’s Lauren Miller as she flew down the left side of the ice and shot high, finding an opening in the upper left corner of the net, evening the score to 2-2.

After that UW took care of business in the second half of the second period, as Josephs put up a second goal, tipping a shot of teammate Courtney Burke’s up over the goalie’s shoulder from out in front of the net.  .

“I give Courtney [Burke] full credit on that goal.  She hit my stick, I had no idea where the puck was,” Josephs said.

The Badgers finished off the period with two more goals, the first being a powerplay goal by senior forward Madison Packer, and the second a slap shot off Sarah Nurse’s stick all the way from the blue line, catching Bemidji’s goaltender off guard.

As for the third period, Packer was the lone scorer, putting up two more goals and earning herself a hat trick, the second of her college career.  Both goals started with a shot by Burke and deflected off Packer’s skate into the net.  Like Josephs, Packer recognized the contribution of Burke and gave credit to her teammate instead

“I didn’t do much to score those, so props to [Burke],” Packer said.

But Coach Johnson saw things differently; he stated that Packer worked hard throughout the game, and deserved the hat trick she received in return.

“You’ve got to get in the dirty areas if you want to get rewarded, and [Packer] did that tonight,” Johnson said.

Besides Friday being a high scoring game, there were only three penalties total, Wisconsin and Bemidji both played a pretty clean game and kept the hitting to a minimum, something Packer says the Badgers have been working on.

“We had a lot of penalties up in Duluth, so we knew that we needed to clean that up,” Packer said.  “Five on five we’re a tough team to stop.  When we’re on the powerplay we’re a tough team to stop.  But things get Bea lot more challenging when we put ourselves in situations like five on four or five on three, so we knew we needed to stay out of the box.”