Arlan: It’s an eventful time in the world of women’s hockey. In NCAA Division-I, we’re seeing a higher frequency of games, both with the Beanpot and teams trying to make up games that were postponed due to Covid protocols. At the same time, pool play for the women’s hockey tournament of the Beijing Olympics was underway.
In terms of participating countries, this is the largest Olympic tournament with 10 teams. More Olympics rosters means greater impact on college programs with players absent for all or part of the season. To a certain extent, those absences have been mitigated by the fifth-year seniors contributing their experience and abilities.
However, watching Sarah Fillier become a star on the world stage highlights the impossible task Cara Morey had in trying to replace her this year and explains Princeton’s drop from ECAC Champions in its most recent season in 2020 to the bottom of the league’s playoff field.
While Wisconsin and Northeastern, the two teams who met in the NCAA Championship in March, have remained in contention to return to the final throughout the season, both have endured at least a mini slump of late. All of the Huskies losses have occurred while Alina Mueller has been out of the lineup, earlier due to injury, and recently, Northeastern fell to Vermont and Boston College after Mueller left for Beijing. Meanwhile, the Badgers, who cruised into December with a 15-0-1 record, have slowed to a 6-4-3 pace since then.
For Wisconsin, it doesn’t seem to be the absence of a single player that has reduced the winning percentage of late. The Badgers have played without incoming recruit Caroline Harvey, who delayed the start of her collegiate career while she pursues an Olympic medal with Team USA, as well as three players who were centralized but didn’t make the final roster: Natalie Buchbinder, Britta Curl, and Lacey Eden.
What is your theory after following Wisconsin all season? Was the loss of Kendra Nealey on the already-depleted blue line a tipping point, is it a combination of factors, or do you think it is just part of the ebbs and flows that teams go through in a long season?
Nicole: You make a good point about the defense, but the thing is, the Badgers have enough offense that in any given game, they should be able to outscore any struggles at the blue line.
The biggest thing for them over this stretch has been their intermittent ability to actually put the puck in the net, despite throwing everything they have at it. This has actually been a problem that has plagued them for a stretch nearly every year – it’s just happening at a very inopportune time and with more competition at the top this time around.
I can think of two older examples off the top of my head – back in 2014 they lost to Minnesota State in the first round of the WCHA playoffs 3-0 after outshooting the Mavericks 51-22. In the final regular season weekend of the 18-19 season, they hosted Ohio State needing one win to earn the conference title. They outshot OSU 53-24 in a 1-1 tie and 95-44 on the weekend.
This year, they outshot St. Cloud 55-19 two weeks ago and settled for a 1-1 tie and then peppered Jojo Chobak of UMD last weekend, outshooting the Bulldogs 45-19 and losing 3-0.
To some extent, I do think it starts to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. They have to know this tendency exists and by the time they reach 20 shots with no goals, they’re already gripping their sticks too tight and trying to get fancy with the puck and generally overthinking it and trying too hard.
It’s clear this is partly just a bug in how the Badgers play. Though their coach Mark Johnson would like to dismiss it as puck luck, I think it happens too regularly to be dismissed as a fluke. That being said, Johnson’s teams are clearly successful and what the Badgers do works, so I think they just sort of take these tough games and move on. Generally, they respond well after these frustrating contests – a 4-0 win against the Huskies and a 5-1 win over UMD.
I’d also say that some of this is just one of the difficulties of being the top team. Some of it is an issue for the Badgers, but a large part is also the fact that they’re pretty much always going to get the best game out of each one of their opponents. Everyone wants to be the one who beats the reigning champions.
After one of their games this season, Wisconsin’s Nicole LaMantia talked to me and Todd Milewski about it.
“I think we know that every team is going to come out against us playing their best. And so we’re not really sure what to expect from everybody. We watch the video on every team we play. But it seems like everybody has an extra gear when it comes to us,” she said.
I mean, every great team deals with this and nobody is going to feel bad for Wisconsin. The Badgers have to figure it out. It’s been a bumpy stretch, but they’re still a very good team. They’re still in line to host an NCAA quarterfinal. They have some more question marks then we’re used to, but I don’t think anyone should count them out, either.
At the moment, Ohio State and Minnesota sit ahead of them in WCHA standings.
Arlan: Historically, the top teams in the WCHA have been more vulnerable in Olympic years with some of the best players being lost to national teams. We’ve seen that throughout the conference again this year. Even newcomer St. Thomas placed two players on the Swiss Olympic roster. Yet somehow, the conference has managed to overcome that and place four teams into the top four spots in the PairWise Rankings.
In addition to Wisconsin, the other ranked WCHA teams have taken Olympic hits of their own, including last spring’s WCHA Defensive Player of the Year, and players who were top 10 and top three finalists for the Patty Kazmaier Award. Despite that, there doesn’t seem to be a shortage of star power. As I write this, eight of the 10 players who have exceeded 40 points on the season play in the conference.
How do you see this year’s WCHA? Is it a case of the league having a lot of offensive firepower, or does it just appear that way because defenses in the circuit are down from what we’d normally expect? By the same token, is having the top four in the PairWise a product of balance and featuring several very good teams but lacking a truly great team that is destined for an NCAA Championship?
Nicole: That’s an interesting question. Fans might love it when they’re team is dominant, but it sure is more fun (and probably better for the sport overall) to have this group of very good teams trading wins.
Offense always gets more attention than defense, so I’m trying to double check myself when my instinct is to say that the reason is high-powered offense. I do think that we can say that Minnesota, Ohio State, Minnesota Duluth and Wisconsin are thinner on defense than we have seen from them recently. Not having players like Buchninder, Ashton Bell and Jincy Dunne has an impact.
As far as it possibly being good, but not great teams, I think we’re in a situation where that can be true and one of them can and likely will be NCAA champion. I don’t think there’s any obvious front runner right now and Northeastern’s fumbles definitely show things to be wide open. It may come down to some of the intangibles. Each of these WCHA teams has recent Frozen Four experience. The experience of making it through the gauntlet of teams usually proves really useful come postseason. When we’re talking tenths and hundredths of points separating folks in the RPI, it’s those sorts of things that can give teams an edge.
We’re focusing on those top teams, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that this is the most competitive from top to bottom that the conference has been. Each of those top teams has struggled against teams in the bottom half of the conference standings. We used to see one or two scares from those teams, but it’s been more than that this season as it’s not just one great goalie performance stealing points.
The way the Pairwise is shaking out right now, we could see a slew of eastern teams – mostly ECAC squads, get on planes to the Midwest come March. That conference has been interesting of late, with unranked squads like Cornell and St. Lawrence taking points off the teams that look like they’ll be heading to the NCAA tournament. The Saints are an interesting case – they currently sit fourth in the conference and have had a much better conference record than their overall one. They feel like a team that could play spoiler come tournament time.
Arlan: In looking through the potential playoff picture in the ECAC, it gets hard to tell the spoilers from the spoiled. Once the postseason gets underway, the matchups are intriguing. A case could make for any team to lose in the first round or win the tourney. I realize that can be said about any league playoff, but in this year’s ECAC, I think it’s the truth.
When I consider Clarkson’s positives, it makes sense that the Golden Knights trail only Harvard in the standings. Caitrin Lonergan leads the league in points. Gabrielle David is fifth in points and third in goals. That type of firepower has helped Clarkson to a seven-game victory streak and a seven-game unbeaten streak, sandwiched around a single loss to Yale.
On the other hand, I can’t forget that the Golden Knights are also the team that went winless on their trip to Bemidji early on, and they’re just 3-4 over their last seven contests. It’s possible that they’ll make noise in the ECAC tournament, but it’s also conceivable that it’ll be from crashing out in the first round.
I also wouldn’t have expected St. Lawrence to be in position to host a quarterfinal. The Saints were the up-and-coming team when last year’s mini ECAC wrapped up play, but the Olympics left holes in their roster that contributed to a couple of winless streaks of five games. I don’t imagine that the teams with designs on winning the ECAC Championship relish the prospect of facing junior Lucy Morgan between the pipes, and if they can get some timely scoring, she could carry the Saints a long way.
Mostly, it’s just strange to look at the league standings and see that the list of teams poised to open the postseason on the road is Quinnipiac, Colgate, Cornell, and Princeton. It makes me keep checking if I have the standings sorted incorrectly.
What do you think is the explanation for this? Should we look to the Olympics, lingering effects of having such a strange 2020-21, or is this the direction that the ECAC is trending?
Nicole: Yeah, those standings definitely don’t reflect how it feels like things have shaken out this season. It also, I think, shows the importance of non-conference scheduling and performing well in those games, since Clarkson, but particularly Quinnipiac and Colgate are ranked similarly nationally as they are in the conference.
It’s likely we should just assume lingering weirdness from last season – the ECAC was the conference most affected by teams not playing. Beyond that, I sure hope this is how things are trending. I’m unapologetically team chaos. It definitely makes my job harder and can make me feel like I have no idea what I’m talking about, but it’s also so good for the sport. And it’s fun! It’s amazing to look at a weekly schedule and not feel like you already know what the outcome of the games will be.
The standout here that hasn’t gotten as much national love is Yale. They’re a team that’s been on the come up over the past few seasons and the hiring of Mark Bolding has proven to be as great a move as it seemed at the time. They’re also a team I was worried would get derailed by the year off, so I’m extra delighted to see their success this season. What’s great is that it feels like this will stick. This isn’t about just having one good class that reaches their senior year. It certainly feels like this is a program build and not a one off and I’m hopeful this season is indicative of what we can expect to see out of Yale year in and year out. Only time will tell, obviously, but I think the Bulldogs are legit, even if they did lose a somewhat baffling game to Brown.
Their status at the top of the conference might not last through these final weeks if the Bulldogs don’t clean it up – they close the season against Clarkson, St. Lawrence, Quinnipiac and Princeton.
Over in Hockey East, Vermont also set a program record for wins in a season over the weekend with two more weeks of the regular season to go. Yale is likely a sure-thing for the NCAA tournament, but Vermont is a bubble team. What have you seen out of these programs that have helped them elevate themselves this year? Do you think the Catamounts can do enough over the next few weeks to cement their first-ever NCAA bid? With things looking as shaky as they have all season, do you think the Hockey East conference tournament and autobid are more up for grabs than we might have thought a few weeks ago?
Arlan: Northeastern looks more vulnerable than it did last season or a month earlier in this one. The Huskies have lost to teams that sit second, fourth, sixth, and seventh in the Hockey East standings, so that hints at a fairly wide-open playoff.
It is tough to evaluate Northeastern without Mueller. Just how much does she mean to the Huskies? Her points-per-game average is the highest in the country, so there is an obvious impact from dropping somebody who yields almost two scores per game from the offense. There also must be a blow to the team’s psyche when it takes to the ice without its most impactful skater. To compensate for the loss of Mueller’s punch on the attack, the Huskies needed Aerin Frankel to make key stops in big moments, but against BC, she yielded the winning goal from distance just 90 seconds after her teammates had pulled even. I’m going to bail on trying to analyze Northeastern minus Mueller any further, and just conclude that as long as she returns from the Olympics intact, that’s all that matters. The Huskies had things their way in winning the third-place game of the Beanpot, 3-0, so maybe they’re back on track.
From the Vermont perspective, the victory over NU was impressive. The Catamounts got a huge performance from Jessie McPherson with 35 saves on 36 shots. This could be their year to make some noise with a senior-heavy roster, including the team’s top four scorers.
The one who constantly catches my eye is Theresa Schafzahl from Austria. She consistently does the little things, working hard to clear the defensive zone, handling a difficult pass and keeping the puck moving up the ice, or hustling back to defend. You mention all of the players from international rosters on NCAA rosters. Team Austria isn’t in the Olympic field, or it’s likely that Schafzahl would be added to your count. She plays a mature game that contributes to wins at any level.
As for whether or not Vermont can get into the NCAA field, there is still an appreciable gap in RPI between Vermont at No. 12 and Quinnipiac, who sits 10th, with Connecticut at No. 11. The Catamounts close with a pair of games versus both BU and BC. The former is a .500 club, and the latter sits just a couple of notches below UVM in RPI, so whether winning those games would be enough to reach the top 10 will depend on what’s happening with the ECAC teams higher in the RPI.
Hockey East is advancing all 10 teams to its playoff this year, so Vermont’s quarterfinal opponent is hard to predict. Advancing to the semifinal could be a date with UConn. Is there enough there to earn an at-large berth with a loss in the HEA final? That answer involves more math than I want to do right now, but I’d tend to doubt it.
Nicole: Collegians past and present are making themselves known in Beijing so far. Through the opening rounds, players with an NCAA connection have accounted for 70% of the points scored – 84 of 120 goals, 124 of the 177 assists.
What do you think about the NCAA becoming the major development tool for international hockey? I know it means we get to watch great, top tier hockey there, but I also worry that federations are using it as a crutch and excuse not to give more funding to their women’s programs to foster development at home.
Arlan: If by international hockey, you’re including the United States, then I agree with you. From what I’ve seen, the average governing body for any women’s sport in any country tends to be rather messed up.
For most of them, apathy tends to be the overriding theme, and the country’s national organization for the sport looks all too willing to wind up in opposition to its athletes. The USA’s top hockey players had to basically strike in order to get decent financial support. The country’s women’s soccer team, which has been even more successful, wasn’t treated any better. Even for the most high-profile women’s sports on the international stage, such as gymnastics in the USA, the people who are hired to nurture that talent allow their athletes to be abused physically, emotionally, and psychologically, and they often are the cause of that mistreatment. That isn’t isolated to one sport or country, nor to a few individuals. The same types of abuse occurred in Austrian women’s alpine skiing decades before.
So, you’re right. It would be nice if the national federations were dedicated to advancing women’s hockey in their countries. At this point, I’m cynical enough that I’ll settle for them providing some level of support and not doing anything to set the women’s program back 20 years, as was the case in Sweden.
That is part of the reason that I’ve always found the college game to be more compelling than international hockey. Every player’s story is told over the course of four years in six-month long chapters, and the plot lines are more varied than Canada and the United States playing one game that really matters every four years.
With that in mind, what new tales are being written on the college rinks?
Nicole: That’s well put. And to expand on it, I’d say having connected with and learned the stories about collegians enhances my enjoyment of international play. Getting to see those young women live out their dreams and elevate their game is pretty amazing. It’s one of the reasons I’m always so baffled by people who like women’s hockey but don’t follow the college game. And why I’m constantly making those connections for people on Twitter.
I often wish I could just spend all my time sharing the stories that are getting written each and every week on collegiate ice. Talking to, learning from and being amazed by the young women who play collegiate hockey is by far the best part of my job.
There are a million stories and I hope to cover even just a few of them.
There’s Emma Soderberg finally getting her chance to shine in Duluth and now Jojo Chobak showing she’s not just a backup.
There’s the stellar sophomores who are already making huge impacts and will likely only continue to get better like Makenna Webster, Casey O’Brien, Kalty Kaltounkova, Jenna Buglioni, Kiara Zanon, Michelle Pasiechnyk, Olivia Mobley and so many more.
Taylor Heise stepping into the spotlight, Caitrin Lonergan getting the season she deserves after so long, Dara Greig emerging after her transfer to Colgate, Becca Gilmore and Kristin Della Rovere leading Harvard quietly up the rankings, the goal-scoring prowess of rookie Vanessa Upson … I could go on and on.
There’s no shortage of compelling players and stories and things are only going to get more exciting and interesting as we head into the post season.
