With the second half upon us, it’s only right to give a wishlist of what I’d love to see from the last half of women’s D-III hockey out west. I’ll also give some predictions of what I think we’ll see play out in the final months. With what we’ve seen so far in terms of upsets and the competition gap being heavily narrowed, there isn’t much that could happen that should shock you.
My wishlist is divided by conference:
NCHA
My wish here is pretty simple: I want to see Adrian, Aurora, & St. Norbert face off against each other. What we’ve seen so far from the NCHA shouldn’t necessarily be surprising, but just impressive considering how much the league has improved over the past few seasons as a whole. Currently two of these teams are ranked, Adrian #4 and Aurora #11, St. Norbert (currently unranked) has held the #15 spot a few times this season.
Statistically, the three have dominated in-conference and out-of-conference, SNC is 6-0-0, 9-2-2 overall, Adrian is 4-0-0, 10-1-0 overall & Aurora is 5-0-1, 9-1-1 overall. Their overall GF-GA (goals-for versus goals-against) is Adrian 44-9, Aurora 62-10, & SNC 61-15. Yes, I’m aware some of these games were against lower-rated opponents, therefore the GF-GA may be slightly inflated, but nevertheless, it’s still impressive. I’m a simple person with simple requests. I want to see these teams face each other, as well as some other top competition, which we’ll finally get to see now that the next half of hockey (and school, can’t forget about that little thing) is now underway.
MIAC
My wish: someone challenges Gustavus and gives them a run in the conference tournament. Currently, Gustavus holds the #1 overall ranking in the USCHO poll and obviously is atop the MIAC, but there are no other ranked teams in the conference and they’ve allowed 11 less goals total (7) than the next closest team in Augsburg who’s allowed 18. It would be nice to see someone such as Hamline who has struggled in out-of-conference play with a 1-4-0 record, but a strong in-conference record of 5-1-0 challenge Gustavus.
WIAC
My wish: seeing another UW-River Falls vs UW-Eau Claire conference title game. The unfortunate reality regarding the WIAC is the conference doesn’t receive an auto-bid to the NCAA tournament via winning the conference tournament, but that doesn’t mean us as fans can’t be treated to another game between two rivals such as Eau Claire and River Falls. Last year, UWRF went 26-1-0 (not counting the NCAA tournament) and who was their only loss you ask? UW-Eau Claire, who went 23-5-0, both have 5th-year graduate senior goalies as well. Sami Miller – UWRF & Stephanie Martin – UWEC. These two teams always make it interesting.
UWEC, currently 10-2-0 including a loss to current #2 UWRF, hasn’t received much credit in the USCHO poll thus far, they also (currently) hold a pairwise ranking of #16, which isn’t 100% accurate now due to NESCAC teams having approximately 50% of the total games played compared to the rest, but nevertheless, UWEC needs a strong second-half with some big wins. Their opening series with St. Norbert can either really help them, or do the opposite. Another WIAC wish of mine is UWEC makes a run and finishes the season receiving an at-large bid (because they can’t receive an auto-bid).
Conference Winner Predictions
MIAC
Gustavus. I’m putting this first because it’s short and simple for me. I’ll make the prediction that I think Gustavus loses (at most), 1 league game, and they most likely go undefeated in conference play. I don’t see anyone beating the Gusties in their league, if it does occur, I don’t think it’ll occur more than once. Simply put, Gustavus is a league above the rest of their conference currently in terms of skill level and national-championship contention hopes.
NCHA
Adrian. This one is extremely tough to pick, but in-part because of how last year ended for Adrian, I have to pick them to win it, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Aurora went back-to-back. Adrian losing early last year in the conference tournament vs Aurora after stringing together many wins to reach the 20 win mark after being ridden with covid, makes me believe this group will want it the most and considering how they’ve looked so far against top-5/top-10 competition, there’s no reason why they can’t win the conference, even the NCAA tournament.
No disrespect to Aurora, or even St. Norbert who I lauded over earlier, but I don’t believe SNC is ready to make the leap of winning the NCHA (fell last year to Aurora in the final), and also the fact that most likely, SNC will have to face both Aurora and Adrian in the conference tournament, while Adrian and Aurora likely won’t have to face each other until the finals.
WIAC
UW-River Falls. It’s another tough pick considering the small league of four also includes UW-Eau Claire, but based on what UWRF has done so far against top-5 opponents home and away, I need to see UWEC face better competition and beat them before I can consider them to prevent UWRF from repeating as WIAC champions. I wouldn’t be shocked at all if UWEC won the WIAC, I just can’t pick them over UWRF based on their bodies of work thus far.
Looking forward to seeing what these last few months bring us, it seems just as though we began the 2022-2023 season a few weeks ago, but here we are, in the final stretch. Should be interesting to see how the teams and conferences out west fare the rest of the way considering what we’ve seen so far.
