DULUTH — With three of the four teams coming out of the WCHA (who I see play more often than other conferences by virtue of my living in Milwaukee and writing about women’s hockey not being lucrative enough to allow me to travel all over for games) I have been writing previews of these teams and how they match up against each other since the beginning of February.
So instead of rehashing all the recent meetings and how they all compare to each other, I thought it might be more fun to make the argument for – and against – why each of these four teams will win the National Championship on Sunday.
Minnesota
Why they’re going to win: The Gophers haven’t won a title since 2016 and while the rest of the country reads that and thinks “oh boo hoo,” I’m pretty sure Taylor Heise takes it personally.
While there are a number of elite, game-changing players in this tournament, I also am not sure that there’s anyone that can stop Heise and Grace Zumwinkle when they are focused, determined and unwilling to lose. Few players have the demeanor to say “I’m not going to let us lose this game” and then have the skill to go out and make that happen, but those two do.
The Gophers have had some stumbles this year, but that’s only going to help in this game. I have not seen a team play as complete a dominant game as the Gophers did in the WCHA title game – and it was against Ohio State, the top team in the country. They executed at every level and brought the kind of relentless wave after wave of pressure that has actually been the Buckeyes’ hallmark. Their top two lines are as good as any in the country, but there’s only a drop off to the third and fourth lines because the top ones are actually Olympic level.
Why they’ll lose: Minnesota has to control their emotions. That means not letting the moment get to them or getting too overwhelmed by how much they want this, but it also means not getting overly physical, embellishing, retaliating or talking too much trash on the ice. Their clearest path to the title involves as few penalties as possible. Wanting something so much can make it hard to focus and play your best.
The Gophers play best when everything is clicking on all cylinders. That seems obvious, but the offense can’t be as smothering if the defense isn’t controlling the neutral zone and keeping their opponents away from the net. If they have to spend a lot of time trying to advance the puck, it takes away a lot of what makes them so great.
Northeastern
Why they’re going to win: The Huskies last lost a game in November. They have just three blemishes on their record all season – two losses and a tie. They have a strong core of older players who have played in – and lost – a semifinal and a championship game. They have motivation. They’ve learned from their mistakes. They have taken a more macro view of the season that has said individual losses aren’t a big deal, but neither are individual wins unless it’s the last one. While Wisconsin and Ohio State are chasing a known high, they are looking to erase two straight years of disappointment. That’s a totally different motivator.
Alina Müller is a truly elite goal scorer. Gwyn Philips has shown herself to be unflappable in the postseason, despite this being her first time around as a starter. Northeastern is solid at both ends of the ice and they have a number of players that are able to change the flow of a game on a dime. They’ll win if they are able to score shorthanded and make special teams work for them no matter who’s in the box.
Why they’ll lose: Alongside that veteran core, they have a ton of new faces. While Müller et al have been focused on this since the second their semifinal ended in March 2021, these players have no frame of reference and while they want to win for the older group, they don’t have that same drive that coming so close and missing out gives you. The Huskies will also lose if they can’t wrestle control of the game away from their opponent – or at least create some speedbumps before it runs away from them. All three of the other teams in this Frozen Four are going to try to kill them with their speed and wear them down with their depth. NU will lose if they can’t keep up and tire out before the game is over.
The flipside of their short-handed ability is that it leaves them more vulnerable. They won’t have a huge speed advantage on their opponents here and the teams will be watching for this. The level of shooter and puck movement from the other Frozen Four teams outpaces what the Huskies have seen on the penalty kill and if they’re not careful, a lunge for a shortie could leave even more open ice for their opponent to capitalize on.
Ohio State
Why they’re going to win: If we count the Badgers’ wins in 2019 and 2021 as back to back (since 2020’s tournament was cancelled due to Covid), the last three winners of this tournament have been back-to-back winners – Minnesota in 2015 and 2016, Clarkson in 2017 and 2018 and Wisconsin. That recent history would sure seem to bode well for Ohio State.
They have the single best defender that’s played the women’s college game in years – maybe ever. The Buckeyes are full of grad students with international experience who helped build this program from before it was nationally prominent. They’ve climbed the mountain and then the kept their place atop it from pretty much the whole season.
Why they’ll lose: Underestimating Northeastern in the semifinal.
Goalie Amanda Thiele was unstoppable last season, but has been more uncertain this year. She has been great the past few weeks of the postseason, but if she starts giving up rebounds again, OSU is in trouble.
The Buckeyes have to focus on their game and not let control of the run of the game get away from them. They have had issues in the past few weeks coming back from getting put back on their heels. If they get caught in having to be defensive with little break in pressure, they have seemed to not be able to flip the game back around. Needing to spend time bailing out Thiele, failing to clear the zone, not controlling the neutral zone and allowing a team to move the puck around them will keep them from the fast, powerful pressure they want to put on and would be their downfall.
Wisconsin
Why they’re going to win: The Badgers won the title in 2019 and 2021. Cami Kronish, Sophie Shirley, Britta Curl, Nicole LaMantia and Natalie Buchbinder were all on both of those teams and eight more members of the current roster joined them in winning the 2021 title.
The talent up and down their roster is stupid good and the third line is as likely to score as the top one. They have elite scorers in Lacey Eden and Jesse Compher and a great threat from the blue line in both KK Harvey and Nicole LaMantia. Casey O’Brien’s speed gives her so many opportunities and they have so many freshman forwards that are going to make an international impact it’s impossible to know which one to highlight.
While there’s a lot of speed on every team here in Duluth, but I’m not sure any of them quite match what Wisconsin can do through the neutral zone.
Why they’ll lose: A plague of this team has been turnovers and goals that result from sloppy passing and/or failure to clear the puck from the zone cleanly. They do the hard stuff well and then don’t complete the final step, hanging the goalie out to dry.
Like Minnesota, they have to play smarter. Their veteran players have taken far too many penalties in crucial spots in the last month. They need their best players on the ice focused on being on offense. They can’t be tired from killing penalties.
Wisconsin has been better on the power play lately, but their season numbers were best forgotten. Tied to that, the Badgers have gone through scoreless stretches this season. They can struggle with smart shooting and their propensity for sailing through the neutral zone and getting breakaways means fewer second- and third- chance opportunities because there are no trailing players to crash the net. It’s as simple and as complicated as the fact that they have to score goals to win the game. A big boost would be if Casey O’Brien could bury even a fraction of the odd-player rushes she gets. She’s been basically stonewalled and her team could really use her figuring out how to solve that issue.
