Merry Christmas Everyone! As we nearly find ourselves in the second half of the season, we’ve reached a point in time in which many look forward to, the holiday season. However, there’s some of us that just want D-III hockey back, so Santa, you can have your day of fame, but you better head back to your dim cave soon, because hockey must return and the show must go on!
To celebrate Christmas and to give myself something to be useful for when hockey isn’t occurring, we’ll look at the second half for both the East & West, where I’ll create a wish list by-conference of what I think would be cool to see happen. But first, we have five coaches (three west, two east) who’ve said what their respective teams would like for Christmas!
Coach Wishes
Adrian – Assistant Coach Trevor Coykendall
To start off with our coaches, we go to Michigan, where Assistant Coach Trevor Coykendall has had it pretty rough lately, being forced to visit Italy with his Bulldogs for their winter Europe trip. Hopefully he didn’t suffer too much while over there! On a more hockey-related note, Adrian split with the Italian National Team in Bolzano, Italy, losing 1-0 & winning 2-1.
Coach Coykendall’s wish for his Bulldog’s is: “we’d like to have no power outages during playoffs this year.”
This is in reference to last year’s storm that passed through the Midwest during the NCHA semifinals/finals which took place in Adrian. This caused a one-day delay for the tournament as the Arrington Ice Arena lost all power.
St. Norbert – Head Coach A.J. Aitken
Staying in the NCHA, but a little farther west in De Pere, WI, St. Norbert’s Head Coach A.J. Aitken gave us two wishes for his Green Knights, hopefully his multi-wish greed doesn’t annoy hockey Santa too much…
His first wish: “We hope to get some snow to start feeling like hockey season.”
Second wish: “With a competitive second-half schedule and playoffs coming, special teams will be a huge factor. Hopefully Christmas brings us a strong powerplay performance!”
UW-Eau Claire – Head Coach Erik Strand
Before we head east, let’s head even farther west to Eau Claire, WI. Head Coach Erik Strand gave us his wish for his Blugolds:
“Average four goals per game and get back to being Scrooge in the defensive-zone.”
The Blugolds currently average 3.9 goals per game, some important games ahead vs their rivals and current #1 UW-River Falls, should be fun times ahead in the WIAC.
Chatham – Head Coach Mike O’Grady
Moving to the eastern region of D-III, in the ‘Steel City’ of Pittsburgh, PA. Head Coach Mike O’Grady’s Cougars are off to their best start in program history with a first-half record of 8-1-2. Coach O’Grady had two answers for this question, he gave his own and what his team would likely give him as a gift.
His response “Chatham wants our experience to continue to educate our youth as we grow together as a program and continue to find more depth in offense.”
What his players would likely give him: “a dictionary so I know how to spell words correctly in the group chat correctly.”
Keep an eye on Chatham, the two primary-names of Nazareth & Utica are overshadowing the Cougars at the moment, a sneaky team looking to make that next leap as a program and win a UCHC title.
Utica – Head Coach Dave Clausen
Heading farther east to Utica, NY, the farthest east we’ll go for this. Head Coach Dave Clausen has one simple wish for his Pioneers… “Home ice in the postseason!”
Many coaches I’m sure share this same like-minded thought as Coach Clausen, short and simple, home-ice! The Pioneers are currently 9-1-2 with upcoming series with Nazareth & Chatham. Coach Clausen gets his Christmas wish a little early, getting home-ice for these four games in back-to-back weekends, which should lead to a shakeup in the UCHC!
Looking Ahead (by conference)
Here’s my semi-wish list for D-III women’s hockey for the second half.
CCC
The team I picked this preseason to make noise in the CCC was Western New England, the Golden Bears currently sit atop the league, but the Gulls of Endicott have two games in-hand, assuming they win both, they’d lead the league. Nevertheless, it’ll be exciting to see what happens here with the unthinkable always being in play when it comes to this conference.
My wish in the CCC is for the Golden Bears of WNE to play in their first-ever conference title game, being they’re such a young program, it would be really cool to see this happen. Let it come to fruition and this would be great for hockey.
Another thing I’d love to see, is the great matchups that we do get whether I wish for it to occur or not, seeing the current top four of the league Western New England, Endicott, Univ. of New England, & Salve Regina all battle it out in their respective series’.
Keep an eye on this underrated conference that even though they haven’t produced NCAA tournament title contenders, it always delivers a great conference playoffs year-after-year.
MIAC
A wish for this conference for me doesn’t necessarily exist outside of seeing Gustavus drop a game or two. Now this isn’t because I have anything against Gustavus because I don’t, amazing what they’ve overcome within the past year and giving the west their first-ever national championship, but it’ll make the MIAC playoffs even more exciting.
If we see Hamline, who sits behind Gustavus in 2nd place in the MIAC with a record of 5-1-0, Gustavus at 6-0-0, knock off the Gusties, it’ll lead to madness near the end and overall make the playoffs a fun watch for the viewer.
Saint Mary’s is the other team to watch for, currently 3-3 (two losses to Gustavus), sit 6th in pairwise (currently in the at-large bid range), have shown us potential to knock off top-teams and challenge anyone in D-III.
Let’s see if the MIAC delivers us its usual madness!
NCHA
My wish in this league is to see the newcomers Dubuque win a playoff series in the NCHA playoffs. They sit in 7th place with a 2-4 record, look for them to snag a game here and there.
Another to look forward to is the series between Adrian and St. Norbert. These two always deliver us great games regardless of record, this year being in Adrian, it’ll be a fun one! Will we see a new champion come out of this league and head to the NCAA tournament? We saw Aurora shock everyone recently in 2022, but for the most part, it’s been Adrian’s league as of late.
NEHC
This league doesn’t need many wishes if any, it’s giving us everything we could ask for. Norwich has emerged as a sleeper team in the NCAA tournament, they’ve defeated and tied top-5 Plattsburgh, defeated Elmira twice (one non-conference), and have gone unbeaten in their last nine games (8-0-1).
All eyes should be on Norwich vs William Smith in Geneva, NY at ‘The Cooler’ on 1/13/24 as the Herons are the lone team in the NEHC to defeat Norwich, which occurred in their opening weekend, Herons winning 3-2 in Vermont.
Once again, another league that isn’t disappointing us!
NESCAC
The deepest conference in D-III women’s hockey has seemed to live up to that tradition. My wish for this conference is for Amherst to keep rolling. They’ve got the best goaltender in the country in my opinion and the stats don’t hurt my opinion either.
Middlebury’s another team I’d like to see come out of this conference; they have one of the best schedules of any team in D3 year-after-year. Besides their conference schedule which is always high-caliber, their non-conference schedule is also top-tier. This season, the Panthers play: (ranking at time of game) #15 Endicott, #4 Plattsburgh, Plattsburgh again, Norwich and Castleton…
If the NESCAC is what everyone says it is, the best conference by a country mile, then Middlebury is the team to lookout for and deserves that at-large bid year-after-year if you look at their success vs the conference AND top-tier elite non-conference opponents.
My main wish for this conference is that we get to see more teams follow suit with Middlebury and Hamilton, play a more exciting, let’s call it, non-conference schedule. Give us the games we want to see!
Expect three teams out of this conference, one auto bid & two at-large.
SUNYAC
My wish is to see another winner come out of this league, nothing against Plattsburgh, but like Gustavus, let’s get some new uniforms in the NCAA tournament! I would say different colors, but Cortland & Plattsburgh are both red/white, so that’s irrelevant. Nothing against the Cardinals, we’ve witnessed greatness by Head Coach Kevin Houle for many years, dominating every year and winning more conference titles than losing… also add SEVEN national titles to that history, absolutely wild. Might never see anything like this again after he calls it a career, one in which that should be considered the greatest ever.
With that being said, let’s see a newcomer out of this conference! Cortland? Oswego? Canton? They may not be the caliber of Plattsburgh on the national tournament-level, but we’ve seen Cortland cause Plattsburgh many problems in the past, anything can happen!
UCHC
My wish for the UCHC is to give us a second half just as good, if not better than the first half. We see Utica making their charge, getting some massive non-conference wins, their Adrian win being the biggest win in program history, will they be able to get over that purple & gold hump known as Nazareth…
We see Chatham making a quiet run of their own, including a narrow loss and tie to Nazareth. Coach O’Grady enters the second half with the best record as a program, looking to get themselves a top-seed in the UCHC playoffs and handle business from there.
My other wish is to get the same competitive games between Utica and Nazareth that we witnessed last year. In my opinion, the three most competitive games in all of D3 between these two-like opponents.
WIAC
Finally, we reach the WIAC, sometimes forgotten due to the lack of the auto-bid but produces a top contender every year. Currently, my wish is for another title to come out of the west, or at least allow the west to host a final four. UW-River Falls is on pace to run away with things at the moment, but that’s where the WIAC kicks in!
This team over in Eau Claire would like to also have a western final four, but River Falls will be brought back down to earth if the Blugolds have anything to say about it. Historically, Eau Claire has been the team to give the Falcons the most problems, granted, they have the most opportunities to beat River Falls, it makes sense they give them the most problems, but it’s always fun when these two play, especially when the WIAC playoffs come around. Expect madness if River Falls faces Eau Claire while still undefeated…
The End
We’ve reached the end, have a great Holiday season and enjoy the time off before D-III hockey ramps back up into action in a few weeks!
