USA Hockey get’s the conversation going for Girls Tier I this July
The Women’s College Hockey Pipeline…
Stay informed. Get educated. Become ‘HOCKEY-WISE’!
Your leading online resource for NCAA Women’s College Hockey
Latest From… The Women’s College Hockey Podcast – Episode #3B…
Episode #3A Part I – Is Now LIVE|The Recap
USA Hockey To Hold ‘Girls Tier I Community Conversation’ In Oxford
In conjunction with the U18 Select Camp this July in Oxford, Ohio, USA Hockey will gather important stakeholders within the Tier I level of Girls Hockey to get the conversation going.
From July 15-16, discussions will take place around the topics of hockey development, rules and regulations, National Championships, and club support. Also included will be brainstorming sessions and a presentation from the U-18 National Team Coaching Staff on player development.
Kudos to USA Hockey for hosting such an event. The hockey world is pretty small, the women’s side of the game smaller.
Nothing moves forward or get’s solved without dialogue. And the U-18 Select Camp provides a perfect opportunity to gather coaches and administrators as well as club personnel – who care about the direction of the game and how to improve it.
I’ll keep you updated about what we hear.
Until Next Time Everyone… Be Well and take Care,
-Streams for games in the ECAC can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams in the WCHA can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams in Hockey East this year can be found HERE. Hockey East once again is streaming all game live and for FREE.
-Streams for CHA games with the exception of Penn St. can be found HERE. Paid subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams for NEWHA games can be found at each teams’ website. Subscriptions may be necessary to watch games.
NCAA Coaching Changes… Keep up with all the coaching changes across D-I and D-III HERE.
Recruiting Events/League Online Directory… Find all the recruiting events on WCH.org right HERE. Want to add your event? Click HERE to fill out our WCH.org event form.
Grant Kimball is founder and contributing writer at Women’s College Hockey.org and beginning his 4th season as an Assistant Coach with the Yale University women’s hockey program. Grant has developed an experienced perspective in the world of women’s ice hockey, having coached and recruited players from across the globe during his 25+ year amateur and NCAA coaching career. He has coached at 6 NCAA DIII and DI programs in the NCHA (D3), the CHA, WCHA, Hockey East, ECAC, and the Ivy League (DI). Beyond coaching, Grant served as a site representative for the 2019 NCAA quarterfinal of the D-I NCAA Tournament. He also currently serves as an Officer with the American Hockey Coaches Association as Vice President of Membership and sits on the AHCA’s Women’s Hockey Executive Committee.
Little lobs of news and info from around the world of Women’s College Hockey & Beyond
Coaching News
Whitehouse Visit for Wisconsin
Swedes Check
ECAC Get’s A New Commissioner
Until Next Time Everyone… Be Well and take Care,
-Streams for games in the ECAC can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams in the WCHA can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams in Hockey East this year can be found HERE. Hockey East once again is streaming all game live and for FREE.
-Streams for CHA games with the exception of Penn St. can be found HERE. Paid subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams for NEWHA games can be found at each teams’ website. Subscriptions may be necessary to watch games.
NCAA Coaching Changes… Keep up with all the coaching changes across D-I and D-III HERE.
Recruiting Events/League Online Directory… Find all the recruiting events on WCH.org right HERE. Want to add your event? Click HERE to fill out our WCH.org event form.
Grant Kimball is founder and contributing writer at Women’s College Hockey.org and beginning his 4th season as an Assistant Coach with the Yale University women’s hockey program. Grant has developed an experienced perspective in the world of women’s ice hockey, having coached and recruited players from across the globe during his 25+ year amateur and NCAA coaching career. He has coached at 6 NCAA DIII and DI programs in the NCHA (D3), the CHA, WCHA, Hockey East, ECAC, and the Ivy League (DI). Beyond coaching, Grant served as a site representative for the 2019 NCAA quarterfinal of the D-I NCAA Tournament. He also currently serves as an Officer with the American Hockey Coaches Association as Vice President of Membership and sits on the AHCA’s Women’s Hockey Executive Committee.
Little lobs of news and info from around the world of women’s college hockey and beyond
The Women’s College Hockey Pipeline…
Stay informed. Get educated. Become ‘HOCKEY-WISE’!
Your leading online resource for NCAA Women’s College Hockey
Latest From… The Women’s College Hockey Podcast – Episode #3B…
Episode #3A Part I – Is Now LIVE|The Recap
Coaching News, Whitehouse Travels, Swedes Check, New Commish
It’s been an eventful week.
Coaching hires and promotions have been announced, Wisconsin went to the Whitehouse, Sweden is expanding it’s body checking rule, and the ECAC hired a new commissioner.
Let’s get to it.
Coaching News At Vermont, Lindenwood, and Princeton
University of Vermont Assistant Coach Alex Gettens has been promoted to Associate Head Coach. Alex will begin his 6th year this upcoming season.
Reah Coad, former Head Coach of the Buffalo Beauts of the PHF, has been named an Assistant Coach at Lindenwood University. Coad spent 2 years behind the bench for the Beauts. You can read the release HERE.
Princeton has hired a new assistant coach, Melissa Samoskevich. Samoskevich comes from Quinnipiac where she was the Director of Player Development and Operations while also playing for the Connecticut Whale of the PHF. Prior to her time at Quinnipiac, Samoskevich previous coached at Penn St.
Wisconsin Almost Misses Whitehouse Visit
Darn E-mail spam folders!
The 2023 National Champs the Wisconsin Badgers finally made the trip to the Whitehouse last week to be honored on College Athlete Day. Strangely, the trip almost never happened.
The Swedish Ice Hockey Federation is expanding its checking rules in women’s hockey.
In addition to the SDHL and NDHL, checking/body contact will now be allowed in Sweden’s four younger regional Junior women’s leagues as well.
86% of players surveyed reported having a positive experience with the new checking rules that were introduced for the 2022-2023 season. The new rules allowed intentional body-contact along the boards or if players were skating in the same direction but no opposite directional open-ice hits were allowed.
This past season, The NCAA standard on body contact, not so much changed, but was an area of focus and more was allowed. The NCAA rules don’t allow for intentional body contact as Sweden’s rule do, but the NCAA game is definitely getting more physical.
You can read the full story on Sweden’s decision HERE.
The ECAC Lands New Commissioner
Doug Christiansen has been named Commissioner of ECAC Hockey. He takes over for Commissioner Stephen Hagwell who has held the commissioner’s post since 2005.
As a former Union College Men’s hockey player (1998-2002) and most recently in his role as Deputy Commissioner of the United States Hockey League (USHL), Christiansen brings a vast hockey background to the position.
-Streams for games in the ECAC can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams in the WCHA can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams in Hockey East this year can be found HERE. Hockey East once again is streaming all game live and for FREE.
-Streams for CHA games with the exception of Penn St. can be found HERE. Paid subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams for NEWHA games can be found at each teams’ website. Subscriptions may be necessary to watch games.
NCAA Coaching Changes… Keep up with all the coaching changes across D-I and D-III HERE.
Recruiting Events/League Online Directory… Find all the recruiting events on WCH.org right HERE. Want to add your event? Click HERE to fill out our WCH.org event form.
Grant Kimball is founder and contributing writer at Women’s College Hockey.org and beginning his 4th season as an Assistant Coach with the Yale University women’s hockey program. Grant has developed an experienced perspective in the world of women’s ice hockey, having coached and recruited players from across the globe during his 25+ year amateur and NCAA coaching career. He has coached at 6 NCAA DIII and DI programs in the NCHA (D3), the CHA, WCHA, Hockey East, ECAC, and the Ivy League (DI). Beyond coaching, Grant served as a site representative for the 2019 NCAA quarterfinal of the D-I NCAA Tournament. He also currently serves as an Officer with the American Hockey Coaches Association as Vice President of Membership and sits on the AHCA’s Women’s Hockey Executive Committee.
D-I Coaches Begin Communication with Players Entering Grade 11 This Fall Starting Thursday
The Women’s College Hockey Pipeline…
Stay informed. Get educated. Become ‘HOCKEY-WISE’!
Your leading online resource for NCAA Women’s College Hockey
Latest From… The Women’s College Hockey Podcast – Episode #3B…
Episode #3A Part I – Is Now LIVE|The Recap
June 15 Arrives Thursday, What to Know
Well, so much for my shorter post idea 😂.
Longer post… but worth the read.
Tomorrow Thursday, June 15 will be a very busy day for the 44 D-I hockey programs as the recruiting cycle begins for the 2025 class. It will also be a busy and exciting day for hundreds of players across the globe as they begin their quest to play NCAA D-I hockey.
NCAA recruiting rules state D-I coaches my initiate contact with recruits for the first time via phone, email, text, direct social media message, etc. Coaches are now able to have recruiting conversations with recruits and family members as well as make official verbal scholarship or non-scholarship offers to join their program.
As exciting as this time of year can be for players and families, it can also bring a lot of stress and anxiety – both for those who are engaged in the process and for those who are not – but want to be. So with, June 15 less than 24-hours away, here a few things to keep in mind so you don’t drive yourself bonkers.
All Is Not Lost
It’s A Numbers Game
Do Prepare
Your Situation Is Not Anyone Else’s
January or February Could be More Important
All is not lost if you don’t get a phone call
Just because you didn’t get a call on June 15, does not – in any way – mean your D-I dream is dead.
Far from it in fact. Players make it to the NHL undrafted every season–Last night’s Con Smythe Stanley Cup winner as an example! There are many players in every recruiting class, who wind up playing at a D-I school that never got a call on June 15.
So while they may not have gotten a call on that day, they stayed patient, focussed on the process, and worked on their game. The only thing not getting a call means, is you have a bit more work and developing to do. So keep the process in perspective as well as your own development. Sometimes the process takes time.
Every D-I spot doesn’t get committed on June 15, or even Feb. 15 for that matter. Recruiting is one of those living, breathing entities that can change in a heartbeat. Coaches get a ‘NO’ from a recruit and it can change the whole trajectory of their process. It’s also not uncommon for coaches to hold spots free so they can see how players develop over the season. You may not have gotten a call, but you may be on some coaches list and are being talked about as a player to keep watching.
Coaches usually have a pecking order to their recruiting lists and will spend time talking with their priority recruits first. There are only so many coaches who are allowed to make phone calls due to NCAA rules, and there is only so much time in the day. It may take a day or two or three for a coaching staff to plow through all of the calls they need to make.
It’s a bit of a numbers game
More players could get calls this year. Why?
The 5th year COVID grad transfer player goes away in 2025. That means an extra 90-100-ish roster spots will open up and have the opportunity to be filled by graduating High School seniors or PG’s.
When you run the numbers, an average recruiting class is 6 recruits per team. So, the 2025 recruiting class could potentially be at about 264 incoming first year players give or take, 44 teams x 6 players per team = 264. An influx of over 35% more first-year NCAA players.
There are only so many D-I prospects and most schools overlap in calling the same ones. So, how many recruits does a school need call in order to commit its class of 6 players? Great question. I’ve worked at a variety of institutions and I can tell you some years our program has had to call 40 and in others it’s been over 100. But keep in mind there is quite a bit of overlap with schools calling the same player.
There are a lot more players than there are available D-I spots. It’s competitive and you really do need to be in the upper echelon of the talent pyramid to play at the highest level.
If you expect to get some calls, do prepare
There is nothing worse for a coach when talking to a recruit, and it’s a one-sided conversation with the coach doing all the talking. If you anticipate getting some calls, do prepare to talk-back and engage! Have some questions prepared to ask. Have some answers prepared you can speak to if you get questions like, what are you looking for in a school? Do you know what you want to study? When do you see yourself making a decision?
Do return calls, emails, and texts if you get them – even if you aren’t interested in the school. How you handle your hockey affairs says a lot about who you are. So, do take the time to reply. And it’s okay to say you aren’t interested. Sometime a ‘No’ in the recruiting world to a coach, is as good as a ‘yes’ because it allows some focus to come into play. And really – thats a lot of what coaches and players/families are looking for, right? Info so you can know where to focus.
The important piece here, is to do some homework and be prepared.
Don’t compare your process to anyone else but you
Your teammates are getting calls, going on visits, and making decisions. You on the other hand, aren’t doing any of those things… the only thing you’re getting, is bitter at your teammates.
As a player, you start to question things, over-analyze situations, and can talk yourself into a mental tizzy. The reality is, the more you try to dissect why someone is getting the love, and you aren’t, the worse you’ll make yourself feel. And you’ll never know the answers you’re wondering about.
So don’t compare your teammates’ situation to yours. There is a lot that goes into why a coaching staff may want to recruit a certain player. It could be the way the shoot, their position, skill, size, how good of a student they are, financial reasons–you name it. What you can do, is compare yourself to the day before. How did you make your situation or you as a student or as a player – better today than yesterday.
Change Your Mindset
Don’t worry about June 15. Worry about January or February 15 of your grade 11 year instead. Here’s why.
You don’t get a call on June 15 – big WOOP.
If February 15 has come and gone with no calls in your grade 11 year, may be its time to reassess your college hockey goals and start returning those emails, texts, and voicemails from D-III schools.
The amount of growth a player can have between June and February is huge. That’s 7 months! As I said earlier, programs always seem to have some space (and some $$) on the their rosters so they can catch that later bloomer.
So, think about changing your mindset. Get rid of June 15 as the be-all end-all date of dates… focus on the growth you can have during your grade 11 year instead.
Bottom Line
June 15 is the start of something… but certainly not the end.
In most cases, it’s just the beginning of a 2 year time window from when a player could potentially arrive on campus.
Thats a long time for growth and development.
Keep the focus on you and your growth process while keeping all options open that come your way. Your mental health will thank you!
Until Next Time Everyone… Be Well and take Care,
-Streams for games in the ECAC can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams in the WCHA can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams in Hockey East this year can be found HERE. Hockey East once again is streaming all game live and for FREE.
-Streams for CHA games with the exception of Penn St. can be found HERE. Paid subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams for NEWHA games can be found at each teams’ website. Subscriptions may be necessary to watch games.
NCAA Coaching Changes… Keep up with all the coaching changes across D-I and D-III HERE.
Recruiting Events/League Online Directory… Find all the recruiting events on WCH.org right HERE. Want to add your event? Click HERE to fill out our WCH.org event form.
Grant Kimball is founder and contributing writer at Women’s College Hockey.org and beginning his 4th season as an Assistant Coach with the Yale University women’s hockey program. Grant has developed an experienced perspective in the world of women’s ice hockey, having coached and recruited players from across the globe during his 25+ year amateur and NCAA coaching career. He has coached at 6 NCAA DIII and DI programs in the NCHA (D3), the CHA, WCHA, Hockey East, ECAC, and the Ivy League (DI). Beyond coaching, Grant served as a site representative for the 2019 NCAA quarterfinal of the D-I NCAA Tournament. He also currently serves as an Officer with the American Hockey Coaches Association as Vice President of Membership and sits on the AHCA’s Women’s Hockey Executive Committee.
Stay informed. Get educated. Become ‘HOCKEY-WISE’!
Your leading online resource for NCAA Women’s College Hockey
Latest From… The Women’s College Hockey Podcast – Episode #3B…
Episode #3A Part I – Is Now LIVE|The Recap
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Others receiving votes: St. Lawrence 14, Boston College 6, Mercyhurst 3, St. Cloud State 3, Harvard 1
USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine College Hockey Poll
(Week Nine Poll)
First-place votes in parentheses
RANK
SCHOOL
LAST WEEK’S RANKING
2022-23 RECORD
WEEKS IN TOP 15
1.
University of Minnesota, 282 (18)
1
9-1-1
9
2.
Ohio State University, 263 (1)
2
10-1-1
9
3.
University of Wisconsin, 233
3
10-2-0
9
4.
Quinnipiac University, 207
4
10-1-0
9
5.
Colgate University, 203
6
11-1-0
9
6.
Yale University, 191
8
4-0-0
9
7.
Northeastern University, 180
7
10-1-1
9
8.
University of Minnesota Duluth, 166
5
7-5-0
9
9.
Cornell University, 143
9
5-1-0
9
10.
Providence College, 100
12
9-2-1
4
11.
Clarkson University, 90
10
10-3-1
9
12.
Penn State University, 75
11
8-5-1
8
13.
University of Vermont, 68
14
7-4-1
9
14.
University of Connecticut, 30
NR
9-1-1
4
15.
Princeton University, 22
13
1-3-0
9
Others Receiving Votes: St. Lawrence University, 14; Boston College, 7; St. Cloud State University, 3; Mercyhurst University, 2; University of Maine, 1.
Notes: The ECAC leads with seven teams in the ranking, while the WCHA has four, the HEA has three and the CHA has one… Team records are listed as W-L-T.
About the Poll: The 26th annual USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine Women’s College Hockey Poll is conducted each week in conjunction with the American Hockey Coaches Association. The poll includes input from coaches and journalists representing each of the six NCAA Division I ice hockey conferences, as well as composite votes from officers of the AHCA and USA Hockey.
*NCAA Tourney Auto-bid is retained until the end of 22-23. Robert Morris Univ. will re-join the CHA for the 23-24 season as its 6th member meeting the NCAA Tourney Auto-bid requirement.
Below you will find comprehensive D-I attendance figures for all teams, found on USCHO. It is in order of average attendance per game. You can download these numbers below and sort how you want. Interesting to see. As of today there will have been 40 Friday games with a start time of 5pm or earlier, most around the the 2pm time frame.
How can you build an interest or a fan base when games start at 2, 3, 4, or 5pm on a Friday?
Maine has had the most home dates thus far with 10
Wisconsin leads the way with an ave per game attendance at 2,223 and a 97.8% capacity figure. Next is Minnesota at 40.9%
Only 2 teams have averages per game over 1,000 and only one team (Wisco) is averaging more than 2k per game
As for a breakdown…
1 team in the 2k’s
1 team in the 1K’s
1 team in the 800’s
1 team in the 700’s
2 teams in the 600’s
4 teams in the 500’s
6 teams in the 400’s
8 teams in the 300’s
8 teams in the 200’s
8 teams in the 100’s
2 teams below 100
Unfortunately – only 23.8% of D-I programs are drawing more than 500 fans per game.
Total attendance across D-I to date in the season is 94,590
Most Saturday games are play in the early to mid-afternoons. In fact, only 10 Saturday games to date out of 102 have had a start time of 6pm local time or later.
Officiating doesn’t have a numbers problem. It has a system problem and it is broken. The numbers have always been there – in fact they are right in front of our eyes. Hundreds of thousands of them. They’re called players. It’s who every person in charge of getting more officials into the game talks about… “hey, we want officials who have played the game”. Problem is, in the officiating world, the system of becoming one, winds up being one of choice rather than having the opportunity to begin with.
We have been told since mid-last year that officiating numbers across the US and Canada are dwindling and there are major problems. So much so, that a state like MN is contemplating a rule that forbids teams to schedule multiple games in a day. There’s just not enough officials to work the amount of games. Youth hockey has this problem and so too does NCAA men’s & women’s hockey. Leagues are losing numbers and quality people with experience.
So how do you increase the pool of officials without deteriorating the quality? Age old questions for sure.
You could pay officials more, right? But then, everyone would have to pay more.
The model of attracting new officials is old, outdated, and frankly, difficult. You offer learn-to-ref clinics, put up some posters in the local rink, take and pass a test, get certified, get scheduled to work games, etc. But in these post pandemic days – it’s hard. Who wants to get screamed at by some loose-cannon hockey parent for an hour + on a Saturday afternoon for $20-$40. No thanks. You ever try and ask someone to sign up for something? It’s hard, it takes work, follow up, phone calls, emails, texts, etc. and worst of all, you have no control over who signs up – totally out of your hands.
Now, I don’t know what the percentages would be, but I’d bet most hockey officials played the game at even a bare bones organized house league level. I mean they have to learn to skate somewhere right?
The model has always been – have people who are interested in officiating sign up. At the higher levels, it’s a bit more of a recruitment process. But basically, at the local levels, offer a certification program, charge a fee, take a test and bam – you’re an official. It’s a model based on filtering or bringing people in. It’s a choice for people to do or not.
Well, what if you flipped the model? Instead of filtering new officials in, what if you filtered officials out?
What if the system was… you’re a young child and you want to play organized hockey, awesome. Guess what, as part of a players trajectory from age level – to age level, you are going to be introduced to officiating at the appropriate age, (holy-smokes you’ll even learn the rules of the game–which when you’re starting out as a player is kind of important!). You’ll have a chance to become an official because it’s part of the program of becoming a registered player. It’s what you do.
On the elite side of things, imagine if every player, male and female who attended a player development program/camp for USA Hockey or Hockey Canada walked away with being certified to be an official? You have an elite pool of players at your finger tips who probably have the one skill necessary to be an elite official – skating.
A few things would happen… 1) You would grow the pool of officials exponentially from a younger age. And when the pool grows – the numbers of talented officials would grow too. 2) Instead of trying to rope new officials in – officials rope themselves in because they want to learn to play the game. 3) The culture around officiating would change drastically. If just about every registered player knew what officiating was like – AND ALSO KNEW THE RULES OF HOCKEY, the abuse would drop drastically. There’s no doubt coaches and players would respect one another more. 4) Financially, the coffers would grow. Sure there would be a cost to do something like this, but that can be off-set w/ increased participation registration fees. You always have thousands more players register to play than those who choose to sign up to get certified to become an official. 5) As players go through this type of program from a younger age – some will filter themselves out of officiating – while many, many more will stay in it because they’ve done it for so long, enjoy doing it, and perhaps may see a career path with it.
Outside the box idea for sure. But with all the issues, something drastic has to be done.
Upcoming Events… There usually aren’t a lot of in-season tournaments or special events during the course of the D-I or D-III season, but with Thanksgiving and the holidays approaching, there will be some. Here’s a partial list:
Las Vegas Showcase, Boston University, Penn State, Minnesota, Yale, Nov. 25-26
East/West Showcase, St. Cloud, Minnesota, UNH, Merrimack, Jan. 6-7
Capital District Mayors Cup, Union & RPI, Jan. 28
The Beanpot, Boston College, Boston University, Harvard, Northeastern, Feb 7 & 14
History Made… It is believed to be a first in D-I as two black female assistant coaches faced off vs. one another when Union College’s Olivia Soares faced Dartmouth College’s Nina Rogers last weekend. The story made NHL.com which you can read HERE.
New Poll… For those who don’t know about The Ice Garden, you should. It’s a SB Nation blow/website that covers the PHF and all things professional women’s hockey. They also do their own NCAA D-I Women’s Poll each week. You can catch that right HERE.
NLI Signings… The National Letter of Intent signing period was last week which allowed players a chance to sign their scholarship paperwork. Programs usually will announce recent signings after this period on their websites – so stay tuned!
ECAC News… Big news out of the ECAC this week as we learned the ECAC Women’s and Men’s playoffs will feature all 12 teams. While no specific playoff structure was announced for the women, it’s believed the they will follow the men’s side. Teams 1-4 will get a bye in the first round while teams 5-8 will host seeds 9-12 in a one game single elimination format. Winners would move on to play in a quarter-final best-of-three series hosted by seeds 1-4 the following weekend. Those winners would move on to the championship semi-finals and finals each. being one game. You can read the official story HERE. The change for the women takes effect in 2024 while the men’s side will see the new format this season.
We’re starting a new section to our blog called… In Case You Missed It or ICYMI. If you didn’t get the chance to read out last post, now you can. Will will begin putting out previous Pipeline posts at the bottom of our current one. Check it out below.
The Women’s College Hockey Pipeline…
Stay informed. Get educated. Become ‘HOCKEY-WISE’ !
Your leading online resource for NCAA Women’s College Hockey
Lots of New
There’s a whole lot of new coming into the 22-23 NCAA hockey season. New teams, new coaches, old players on new teams, new rules, new polls, and a new auto-bid to the NCAA tourney. You get the picture – Let’s dive in!
NEW TEAMS DROP THE PUCK
Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts just outside Boston becomes the NEWHA’s 7th member as they begin play as a first-year NCAA D-I program under first-year Head Coach Tara Watchorn. Thus far, the Skyhawks are 4-3-1 with 4 strait wins in NEWHA play sweeping Post and St. Mike’s after dropping their first two NCAA contests to UCONN 7-1 and 3-2. The Skyhawks have since tied and lost to Brown 2-2 and 3-1 last week.
At Division III, the Hilbert College Hawks out of Hamburg, NY south of Buffalo, get underway this year as an D-III Independent. Their first NCAA games are set for October 28 & 29 when the travel to face Alvernia and Lebanon Valley. The Milwaukee School of Engineering hit the re-set button on starting their program and will begin lay in ’23-’24. Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, CT has made its hire in Steve Novodor and will put a team on the ice next season in 23-24.
NEW COACHES
This was the most active year for coaching/support staff changes in recent memory. 71 changes in total have been made to date. There are a few D-III positions still to be announced, so we’ll eclipse the 70+ mark. That is a lot of turnover.
6 new head coaches get behind the bench this year for D-I programs and 2 more begin the program building process. You have new bench. bosses in Hockey East-Maine, NEWHA-Long Island Univ., Post Univ., and Stonehill College, CHA-Syracuse, WCHA-St. Cloud. 2 more Head Coaches are building programs virtually from the ground up in Robert Morris University (back in the CHA after being cut in 2021) and Assumption College who is making the transition from ACHA Club status to NCAA D-I and the 8th member of the NEWHA.
An astounding 13 new head coaches have been hired in D-III to start the 22-23 season, 10 of which are changes to existing programs.
OLD PLAYERS, NEW TEAMS
In Division I for the 21-22 season, we saw 85 graduate transfers on D-I rosters. Glancing at each schools’ rosters this season in 22-23, we find a total of 95 graduate transfers at the D-I level, an increase of 10 players. That’s right around a third of all players usually taken in a typical recruiting class. We’ll use 6 players as the average number of recruits a program takes per year.
This trend won’t go away until all players who were granted a 5th year due to COVID by the NCAA, exhaust their eligibility. Which, barring any unforeseen circumstances, should be in the Spring of 2025 and means the 25-26 season should have very few if any grad. transfers.
Year 1 = 20-21 (initial COVID year), Year 2 = 21-22, Year 3 = 22-23, Year 4 = 23-24, Year 5 = 24-25
NEW RULES
The 22-23 season begins a new 2-year cycle for the NCAA men’s & women’s ice hockey rules committee to introduce new rules and legislation into the game. New changes with significance this year:
Offsides: A player shall be considered onside if the skate is over the blue line when the puck enters the attacking zone, which is the rule used in the National Hockey League. Previously, the skate was required to be in contact with the blue line.
Video Review: Coaches Challenges – coaches may challenge a reviewable play. If the play is not reversed, a timeout will be charged for the unsuccessful challenge. Any subsequent unsuccessful challenges would result in a minor penalty for delay of game.
Overtime/Shootouts – will remain 3v3 with conference rules to determine if a shootout will be used after a 5-min 3v3 OT period is played.
Major Penalty Option… officials [have] an option of a major (five-minute) penalty without an ejection. An educational video will be developed to illustrate the differences between a major penalty by itself and a major penalty with an ejection.
High sticking in defensive zone: To be consistent with a hand pass infraction in the defensive zone, when the defensive team high sticks the puck in the defensive zone, the team will not be able to change its players.
Covering puck in crease: The committee added covering the puck in the crease by a skater as a reviewable play through a coach’s challenge.
BODY CONTACT
The NCAA Ice Hockey Women’s Rules Committee members as well as the body of coaches and school administrators, feel legal body contact has been penalized far too often. So in an attempt to have greater consistency across all NCAA divisions and conferences, the women’s rules committee requested language around the rules of body contact be clarified and a supplemental video produced and distributed.
The end result – 11 minutes and 18 seconds of video clips and voice-over clarifications and explanations of what legal and illegal body contact is as defined by the NCAA Ice Hockey Women’s Rules Committee. Here are the takeaways:
Legal body contact may consist of:
Use of Angling
Use of Size, Strength and Balance to play the puck
Use of Body Position to control or gain possession of puck
incidental collision may occur and should not be penalized
There is no distinct hip, shoulder, arm or stick contact to physically force the opponent off the puck
Illegal Body Contact–Principles of the continued enforcement standard
The use of the stick will be limited to only playing the puck
The stick will not be allowed to in any way impede a players progress
The use of a free hand/arm will not be allowed to grab or impede a player’s progress
Players who use their physical skills and/or anticipation and have a positional advantage shall not lose that advantage as a result of illegal acts by the opponent
Players will be held accountable for acts of an intimidating or dangerous nature
Through the first few weeks of the season, it’s been an adjustment for everyone – officials and players. But the early comments from most coaches seem to indicate they really like the direction. It does seem like less penalties are being called, judging from a quick scan of box scores as compared with memory from early last season. It will be interesting to see the number of body contact/illegal checking penalties called this season vs. last.
NEW NATIONAL POLLS
Good bye top 10, hello top 15. The two leading major media outlets that publicize national polls for D-I and D-III women’s hockey, USCHO.com and USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine (just D-I), will now have a weekly Top 15 National Poll to accommodate the increase of teams selected to the NCAA Tournament – which is now at 11 teams. For years, national polls have always listed 10 teams. Below are the weekly polls as of this week.
It’s been a long Summer and Fall tracking all of the coaching and support staff changes across D-I and D-III. In all, 71 staff changes have taken place to date. And we still have a few more on the D-III side to go before the season gets underway in the next 3 weeks. Why so many changes? Hard to put a finger on one ‘thing’. Professional playing opportunities are paying better and attracting younger female coaches who still want to play. But, that’s a minor trend. Lot’s of head coach turnover, which can mean assistant coach turnover as new head coaches look to bring in their own people. Are coaches throwing in the towel and leaving the profession at the NCAA level, yes to some degree. Based on our data, of the coaches who have been hired as a head or assistant at D-I or D-III, a little less than 40% have no NCAA coaching experience. The coaches who leave programs (let go or otherwise) aren’t necessarily being rehired by other programs, which is a much more common occurrence on the men’s side.
For a complete D-I and D-III list of coaching and professional staff changes to date, click HERE for our google sheet Coaching Changes Tracker.
As October has come and gone, the 2023 D-I recruiting process is on the mind of many players, parents, and coaches alike, D-III as well. Those graduating high school in 2022 or 2023 has been engaged in the process since June 15 of the respective year they were allowed to begin communication. The graduate transfer player pool is usually the last to make their commitments given the timing of when transfers typically make commitments – late Feb/March. So while teams may have ‘space’ or scholarship money left, you can bet many programs are saving it for graduate transfer options.
The first wave of D-I commitments for the class of 2024 usually ends around this time of year. And let’s be honest, making a decision where to spend your college years is not that easy. It takes some time and many factors are involved. For players in grade 11 who have been engaged in the process since June 15 – we’re about the 4.5 month-mark right now. More players will make decisions in the coming weeks and months. Others still will wait to find the right school, hockey program and best fit for them.
On the evaluation side of things… there are still plenty of competitive opportunities between now and when the D-I Women’s Hockey Quiet Period begins, usually in the latter half of April. In December, the USA-Canada Cup in Kitchener always attracts competitive teams from across North America. January 8-15, the IIHF U18 World Championships will be held in Sweden. The Canada Winter Games, which is Canada’s version of the Winter Olympics held every 4 years takes place on Prince Edward Island Feb. 18 to March 5. The USA Hockey National Championships and MN Girls National Development Camp Tryout phase events usually round out the last major events. Bottom line, there are plenty of hockey for coaches to watch and evaluate players.
What’s really interesting to watch will be two things: 1) The changing dynamic of recruiting 5th year grad transfer players and 2) How the new standard of allowable body contact impacts recruiting decisions. Will size and physicality be more of a priority?
Some notables:
There are two more D-I teams coming online next fall – Robert Morris University (CHA) and Assumption College (NEWHA). Both are basically looking to build their rosters from the ground up. And grad transfers could be a big part of the recruiting equation for both schools. So there could be more grad transfers taken next year than in years passed.
If the past two seasons are any indication, more than a third of a typical recruiting class is likely to come from graduate transfers. 85 grad transfers were on rosters during 21-22. In 22-23 there are 95. Perhaps more in the next 2 years?
A typical recruiting class is around 6 players, that equates to 264 spots across D-I. (44 teams x 6 players). next season with RMU and Assumption, that number will increase by 2 full teams’ worth of players – let’s assume 24 players per team–add 48 more players and you’re around the 310 mark. 95 grad transfers would be 30% of the class. That leaves 215 spots to be split up between players graduating high school in ’23 and ’24. That’s at least 215 non-grad transfer players. Roughly 30 U18 national team players from various countries take up spots, and now you’re down to 185 spots left. MN as a state has over 100 varsity High School teams… needless to say, you have to be darn good to get an offer at the D-I level. The environment is as competitive as ever.
Player height/size is always something coaches consider when recruiting and it could become more of a factor in future recruiting decisions. Why? There is a coordinated effort from conference director of officials to standardize play across each conference with respect to body contact. Gone will be the days of the WCHA being ‘the most physical conference’.
-Streams for games in the ECAC can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams in the WCHA can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams in Hockey East this year can be found HERE. Hockey East once again is streaming all game live and for FREE.
-Streams for CHA games with the exception of Penn St. can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams for NEWHA games can be found at each teams’ website. Subscriptions may be necessary to watch games.
NCAA Coaching Changes… Keep up with all the coaching changes across D-I and D-III HERE.
Recruiting Events/League Online Directory… Find all the recruiting events on WCH.org right HERE. Want to add your event? Click HERE to fill out our WCH.org event form.
Grant Kimball is founder and contributing writer at Women’s College Hockey.org and beginning his 4th season as an Assistant Coach with the Yale University women’s hockey program. Grant has developed an experienced perspective in the world of women’s ice hockey, having coached and recruited players from across the globe during his 25+ year amateur and NCAA coaching career. He has coached at 6 NCAA DIII and DI programs in the NCHA (D3), the CHA, WCHA, Hockey East, ECAC, and the Ivy League (DI). Beyond coaching, Grant served as a site representative for the 2019 NCAA quarterfinal of the D-I NCAA Tournament. He also currently serves as an Officer with the American Hockey Coaches Association as Vice President of Membership and sits on the AHCA’s Women’s Hockey Executive Committee.
We’ll take a look at the upcoming weekly D-I schedule|
See who’s ranked in the USCHO.com, USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine, and the ‘Power 10’ national polls|
The Pairwise & NCAA Tourney|
Sifters… Little tidbits of news and info from around women’s hockey|
D-I Weekly Schedule
We are going to try a new format for displaying the weekly schedule as well as games played with links to box scores. Formatting from USCHO.com is not kind to mobile users. So to help, we will be using the links CHN – College Hockey News.
It’s ‘Final-Four’ Weekend for NEWHA, ECAC, Hockey East, and WCHA… The CHA completed its post-season playoff championship last weekend with Syracuse beating Mercyhurst in the final 3-2 in OT. The NEWHA, ECAC, Hockey East, and WCHA are all down to its ‘Final-Four’ championship weekend. The NEWHA held quarterfinal games Tuesday. Hockey East played its Semifinal games last night. The NEWHA and ECAC championship weekends have semifinals Friday and championships Saturday. The WCHA final-four championship weekend is Saturday/Sunday. All schedules are below:
Make sure to scroll down
Tuesday, March 1
NEWHA Quarterfinals #6 St. Michael’s 1 @ #3 St. Anselm 2
NEWHA Quarterfinals #5 Post 2 @ #4 Sacred Heart 5
Wednesday, March 2
Hockey East Semifinal #3 UCONN 3 @ #2 Vermont 1, HIGHLIGHTS
Hockey East Semifinal #5 Maine 1 @ #1 Northeastern 3, HIGHLIGHTS are ⬇️
We're headed to our sixth-straight @hockey_east title game.
Hockey East Championship TBD, 7PM, @ TBD Campus site of highest remaining seed, TV-NESN+
WCHA Semifinal #4 MN-Duluth vs. #1 Minnesota, 1:07PM CST, @ Univ. of MN Ridder Arena, TV/Stream INFO
WCHA Semifinal #3 Wisconsin vs. #2 Ohio State, 4:07PM CST, @ Univ. of MN Ridder Arena, TV/Stream INFO
Sunday, March 6
WCHA Championship TBD, 1Pm CST, @ Univ. of MN Ridder Arena, TV/Stream INFO
NCAA Tournament Selection Show, 9PM EST, TV-ESPN NEWS Channel, Stream Info Coming Soon
Game results, box scores, and statistics come directly from CHN – College Hockey News, USCHO.com or the NCAA’s official stats site HERE.
Video highlight links are to individual program produced media, some of which may be found on team twitter or other social media accounts – so scroll the feed to see the game highlights.
Postgame links are any postgame video produced by individual programs and found on either team websites or social media accounts.
Don’t See a link… for video highlights or postgame? Assume there was none available at the time of our post.
D-I Top 10 Polls
Evan’s last look at his Top 10 in D-I women’s college hockey came in last week’s Pipeline Post #65. You can find it HERE.
The Pairwise & NCAA Tourney
The Pairwise
In a Jan. 8th post of the Pipeline we introduced what is known as the Pairwise rankings. ‘The PWR’ or ‘The Pairwise’ as it’s known in NCAA hockey circles, is a way to rank teams that play an unbalanced schedule based on a specific mathematical formula. We use the USCHO.com iteration of the Pairwise rankings which can be found online HERE.
Why are the Pairwise Rankings important? It is what the NCAA D-I Women’s Ice Hockey Committee will use will determine the 11-team field for the NCAA Tournament. And this year, the committee is strictly going by the math and not subjectivity. The Committee will conviene Sunday March 6th and crunch the numbers to announce the 11-teams going to the NCAA Tournament.
Contrary to what many may think, the USCHO.com top 10 poll that comes out each week or any other media poll that exists, has no bearing on who makes the NCAA tournament. Those polls are for media purposes only and not used by the D-I NCAA Women’s Ice Hockey Committee.
Making The NCAA Tournament, Auto & At-Large Bids
There are two ways to make the NCAA Tournament’s 11-team field. Receive your conference’s automatic bid by winning the conference post-season playoff championship – or – have a high enough Pairwise Ranking to fall within the top 11 teams and receive an ‘At-Large’ bid.
There are 5 D-I conferences. 4 of the 11 bids come from conference post season playoff tournament championship Auto Bids. The other 7 are ‘At-Large Bids. The NEWHA does not have an automatic bid until the 22-23 season by virtue of an NCAA rule which stipulates conferences must compete with 6 teams for two full seasons before getting an automatic bid. The NCAA determined the 20-21 COVID season did not count as a full season for the NEWHA while only 2 NEWHA teams played games.
The CHA, which was a 6 team conference until it lost member Robert Morris University when the school shut-down the program in May of 2021, is allowed to retain its auto bid for a period of two years. The CHA would lose its auto bid if it were unable to get a 6th team beginning with the 23-24 season.
After the 11-team tournament field has been selected, then the fun begins in putting together 4 regional sites. To learn more about how the selection process works and how regional sites will be determined – click here for the 2022 NCAA Pre-Championship Manual.
Below is the USCHO.com Pairwise rankings as of Wednesday March 2, 2022.
#8 Outlasts #1 In ECAC… For the first time in the 20-year history of the ECAC Playoff Championship Tournament, the #8 seed Princeton Tigers knocked off the #1 seed Harvard Crimson. The Tigers won game one 3-2, lost game two 2-1 in overtime, but won the third and deciding game, 3-2. #8 Princeton will play #2 Yale in the first ECAC Semifinal set for 3Pm Friday. #2 seed Yale also went the distance in its first-round quarterfinal series with #7 seed St. Lawrence.
Top 10 Patty Kaz Announced… The 10 Patty Kaz finalists were announced today by USA Hockey.
Introducing the top-10 finalists for the 2022 #PattyKaz Award!👏
The WCHA leads the way with 6 finalists while Hockey East landed 4. No one from the ECAC, CHA, or NEWHA made the cut. Northeastern leads the way with 3 players themselves,Minnesota and Wisconsin with 2 each. Ohio St., MN-Duluth, and Vermont each have 1. Northeastern’s Aerin Frankel, last year’s Patty Kaz winner, is a finalist this year.
The Patty will be awarded on the NHL Network March 27 in a special on-air television presentation. The top-3 finalists will be announced March 17th during the Women’s Frozen Four National Championship.
Possible NCAA Recruiting Rule Changes… As the NCAA often does each year, proposals for various rule changes in a variety of areas like recruiting, financial aid, eligibility etc., are announced and then voted on in April to become legislated. The following rule proposals were just announced and will be voted on in April.
Amend the trigger for student-athlete status to align with the approach authorized by waivers the past two academic years in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
An individual would remain a prospective student-athlete until the individual signs a National Letter of Intent or the school’s written offer of admission and/or financial aid or the school receives the individual’s financial deposit in response to its offer of admission and completes all high school graduation requirements or all transfer academic eligibility requirements.
An individual would revert to prospective student-athlete status if the individual does not attend classes at the beginning of the first full-time regular academic term after the individual completes all high school graduation requirements or all transfer academic eligibility requirements.
Specify a school shall not provide more than two consecutive nights of lodging to a prospective student-athlete in conjunction with an official visit.
Eliminate the limitation on the number of official visits a prospective student-athlete may take.
Specify that in sports other than basketball, contact may not be made with a prospective student-athlete during the time of day when classes are in session at their school.
WCH Spring Recruiting Event List… Coming shortly will be our WCH Spring/Summer Recruiting Event List. We’ll keep track of all showcases, camps/clinics, and recruiting events from March until the end of August across North America & beyond we’re aware of. We’ll post a link with event names, dates, and locations along with links to info if provided. For any coaches who want their event listed, please fill out our online form and we’ll be sure to list it. You can find it HERE.
Changes to Camps & Clinics for D-I Schools… In an effort to curb early recruiting tactics by college coaches in sports other than women’s basketball, the NCAA has legislated new ‘Institutional’ camp/clinic rules which took effect in January of 2022. ‘Institutional Camps/Clinics’ are now only allowed to be conducted during the months of June, July, August and December to Feb. 1. Institutional camps/clinics are not allowed outside of that time period.
Institutional camps and clinics are defined as those 1) owned/operated by a D-I coach or the institution institution itself and 2) where participants are classified as prospective student-athletes and have entered grade 9.
This new legislation does not impact Institutional Camps/Clinics where the participants are in grade 8 & below or the ability of college coaches to work for privately owned camps/clinics.
What’s Next For Women’s Hockey… It seems like the sport has this conversation after every Olympics. One would think with over 6 million viewers world-wide for the Gold Medal game, there is a way to harness a sustainable viewing audience for our sports best during the regular hockey season. Word came this week of something in the works. Yahoo Sports’ Justin Cuthbert & Co. bat around whats needed for a viable pro league:
Until Next Time…
21-22 Streaming Info
-Streams for games in the ECAC can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams in the WCHA can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams in Hockey East this year can be found HERE. Hockey East once again is streaming all game live and for FREE.
-Streams for CHA games with the exception of Penn St. can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams for NEWHA games can be found at each teams’ website. Subscriptions may be necessary to watch games.
NCAA Coaching Changes…Keep up with all the coaching changes across D-I and D-III HERE.
Give Someone a Stick Tap… Know someone in women’s college hockey who’s work needs some recognition? Nominate them for WCH.org’s monthly ‘Stick Tap’HERE or Email us at: womenscollegehockey@gmail.com
Recruiting Events/League Online Directory… Find all the recruiting events on WCH.org right HERE. Want to add your event? Click HERE to fill out our WCH.org event form.
Grant Kimball is founder and contributing writer at Women’s College Hockey.org and beginning his 3rd season as an Assistant Coach with the Yale University women’s hockey program. Grant has developed an experienced perspective in the world of women’s ice hockey, having coached and recruited players from across the globe during his 25+ year amatuer and NCAA coaching career. He has coached at 6 NCAA DIII and DI programs in the NCHA (D3), the CHA, WCHA, Hockey East, ECAC, and the Ivy League (DI). Beyond coaching, Grant served as a site representative for the 2019 NCAA quarterfinal of the D-I NCAA Tournament. He also currently serves as an Officer with the American Hockey Coaches Association as Vice President of Membership and sits on the AHCA’s Women’s Hockey Executive Committee.
Weekly Top 10 National Polls – USCHO.com, USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine, and the NCAA’s ‘Power 10’|
Pairwise Rankings |
D-I Conference Playoffs|
Sifters… Little tidbits of news and info from around women’s college hockey & beyond|
D-I Weekly Schedule
We are going to try a new format for displaying the weekly schedule as well as games played with links to box scores. Formatting from USCHO.com is not kind to mobile users. So to help, we will be using the links CHN – College Hockey News.
The regular season has ended for 4 out of the 5 D-I conferences. The NEWHA still has one more regular season weekend to complete. Hockey East kicked off the Conference Tournament season Wednesday with two games. Here’s the weekly schedule.
WCHA Quarterfinal Game 3 (If Necessary), #5 Minnesota State @ #4 MN-Duluth, 2pm CST
WCHA Quarterfinal Game 2, #7 St. Cloud @ #2 Ohio St., 3pm EST
WCHA Quarterfinal Game 3 (If Necessary), #8 St. Thomas @ #1 Minnesota, 2pm CST
WCHA Quarterfinal Game 3 (If Necessary), #6 Bemidji St. @ #3 Wisconsin, 2pm CST
Game results, box scores, and statistics come directly from CHN – College Hockey News, USCHO.com or the NCAA’s official stats site HERE.
Video highlight links are to individual program produced media, some of which may be found on team twitter or other social media accounts – so scroll the feed to see the game highlights.
Postgame links are any postgame video produced by individual programs and found on either team websites or social media accounts.
Don’t See a link… for video highlights or postgame? Assume there was none available at the time of our post.
D-I Top 10 Polls
What a regular season.
The women’s college hockey regular season did not disappoint. Weekend after weekend, college hockey fans were treated to great individual and team performances. The best part was the ever-changing rankings every week due to the amount of parity inside the top 10.
Let’s dive into the final Power 10 of the regular season.
1. Minnesota (26-7-1) | Prev: 1
The Golden Gophers finished the regular season with a sweep of St. Thomas, earning a pair of 7-1 wins. Minnesota was scorching hot in their final 15 games, going 13-2-0 with big wins over then-No. 7 Minnesota Duluth, then-No. 2 Ohio State and a sweep of then-No. 1 Wisconsin. Senior Taylor Heise posted five points on the weekend, bringing her season-total to 60 — good for first in the nation.
2. Ohio State (25-6-0) | Prev: 3
In the biggest series of the final weekend, Ohio State swept Wisconsin by scores of 5-1 and 2-1. Despite the close score in Game 2, Ohio State outshot Wisconsin, 45-23. Junior forward Kenzie Hauswirth entered the weekend with only one goal on the season. She potted three on the weekend, including the game-winner on Saturday. With the sweep, the Buckeyes proved they’re the second-best team in the nation heading into the WCHA postseason and the national tournament.
The Huskies move up a bit in the final rankings of the regular season after earning a 2-1 win over UNH and then going 1-0-1 against UConn this past weekend. It’s fitting that graduate student goalie Aerin Frankel ended the season with a 32-save shutout in the 5-0 win. Frankel finishes the regular season with the best goals against average (1.07) and save percentage (.956) in the country. She’ll be must-watch in the national tournament.
4. Wisconsin (23-6-4) | Prev: 2
The Badgers had a tough weekend at Ohio State, dropping both games and getting outplayed. In Wisconsin’s defense, they were only able to skate three forward lines. The star of the weekend for Wisconsin was backup goalie Cami Kronish. On Saturday, in just her third start of the season, she stopped 43 of 45 Ohio State shots in the 2-1 loss. Starter Kennedy Blair missed the game with an upper-body injury.
5. Minnesota Duluth (22-9-1) | Prev: 4
The Bulldogs only move down a spot because I think the top four teams in college hockey are the four listed above. They faced St. Cloud State over the last week, going 2-0-1 against the Huskies. In the two wins, fifth-year Elizabeth Giguere and redshirt senior Naomi Rogge posted big weekends. Giguere had four assists, while Rogge registered two goals and a helper.
Also, how about senior McKenzie Hewett winning the game with nine seconds to play on Senior Day?
Colgate moves up a spot after three big wins last week. The first was a 3-2 victory over Cornell, then a 2-1 win over then-No. 10 Clarkson. The Raiders finished off the weekend by beating St. Lawrence, 9-1. In the win over ranked Clarkson, Colgate got goals from senior Rosy Demers and sophomore Kalty Kaltounkova. Freshman goalie Hannah Murphy turned aside 39 of the 40 shots she faced.
7. Harvard (21-7-1) | Prev: 8
The Crimson ended their regular season with a 4-1 win over RPI and a 3-0 victory over Union. They got goals from sophomores Shannon Hollands and Courtney Hyland, senior Becca Gilmore, and first-year Taze Thompson in Game 1 and junior Kristin Della Rovere, senior Emma Buckles and senior Dominique Petrie in Game 2. Gilmore has put on an especially great season, potting 43 points in 29 games, which is good for first on her team and tied for 14th in the nation.
8. Yale (22-6-1) | Prev: 6
The Bulldogs fell to Quinnipiac, 4-1, on Friday, but finished strong with a 3-0 win at Princeton on Saturday. Sophomore Elle Hartje finished off a strong second season, posting a goal and an assist over the two games. She’s been dynamite this year, leading her team in points with 44. That number ranks 13th in the nation. Her two-way skills, matched with her production, project her to be an even greater force in the coming years.
The Bobcats earned a 4-0 win over RPI last Tuesday and then a strong 4-1 victory over then-No. 6 Yale. They finished off this past weekend with a 1-0 loss to Brown on Saturday. In the win over the Bulldogs, Quinnipiac got goals from Renee Saltness, Kendall Cooper, Jess Schryver and Olivia Mobley. They also got a great game out of goalie Corinne Schroeder, who stopped 38 of 39 shots en route to the win. Schroeder’s save percentage of .946 is good for third in the nation, while her 1.43 GAA ranks sixth.
10. Clarkson (22-9-3) | Prev: 10
Clarkson ended its season with a 2-1 loss to Colgate and a 3-1 loss to Cornell. Despite ending on two-straight losses, Clarkson is the No. 10 team in the nation. The Golden Knights rank ninth in the country in both goals for (104) and goals against (59). They’ll face Quinnipiac in the ECAC quarterfinals this weekend.
Pairwise Rankings & NCAA Tourney
The Pairwise
In a Jan. 8th post of the Pipeline we introduced what is known as the Pairwise rankings. ‘The PWR’ or ‘The Pairwise’ as it’s known in NCAA hockey circles, is a way to rank teams that play an unbalanced schedule based on a specific mathematical formula. We use the USCHO.com iteration of the Pairwise rankings which can be found online HERE.
Why are the Pairwise Rankings important? It is what the NCAA D-I Women’s Ice Hockey Committee will use will determine the 11-team field for the NCAA Tournament. And this year, the committee is strictly going by the math and not subjectivity. The Committee will conviene Sunday March 6th and crunch the numbers to announce the 11-teams going to the NCAA Tournament.
Contrary to what many may think, the USCHO.com top 10 poll that comes out each week or any other media poll that exists, has no bearing on who makes the NCAA tournament. Those polls are for media purposes only and not used by the D-I NCAA Women’s Ice Hockey Committee.
Making The NCAA Tournament, Auto & At-Large Bids
There are two ways to make the NCAA Tournament’s 11-team field. Receive your conference’s automatic bid by winning the conference post-season playoff championship – or – have a high enough Pairwise Ranking to fall within the top 11 teams and receive an ‘At-Large’ bid.
There are 5 D-I conferences and 11 teams that make the tournament. 4 of those bids come from conference Auto Bids. The other 7 are ‘At-Large Bids. Winners of the Hockey East, ECAC, College Hockey America, and WCHA post-season playoff championship receive the auto bids. You win, and you’re in. The NEWHA does not have an automatic bid until the 22-23 season by virtue of an NCAA rule which stipulates conferences must compete with 6 teams for two full seasons before getting an automatic bid. The NCAA determined the 20-21 COVID season did not count as a full season for the NEWHA while only 2 NEWHA teams played games.
The CHA, which was a 6 team conference until it lost member Robert Morris University when the school shut-down the program in May of 2021, is allowed to retain its auto bid for a period of two years. The CHA would lose its auto bid if it were unable to get a 6th team beginning with the 23-24 season.
Below is the USCHO.com Pairwise rankings as of Tuesday, Feb. 22 just past 8pm.
Below are the final regular season standings for each conference minus the NEWHA which has one more regular weekend of play this Friday and Saturday. Each conference’s post-season playoffs structure is described as well.
Hockey East Post-Season Playoff Format
For the first time ever, the Hockey East Women’s Tournament will feature all 10 member programs in a single-elimination postseason tournament for the Bertagna trophy. Seeds seven and eight will host seeds 10 and nine, respectively, in the Opening Round on Wednesday, February 23 while the top six seeds receive a bye into the Quarterfinals. After a reseeding, the top two seeds will host the winners of the Opening Round while the three seed will host the six seed and the four seed will host the five seed. Semifinals will take place on Wednesday, March 2 and the Championship is set for Saturday, March 5 in prime time for just the second time ever.
QUARTERFINALS, Best 2 Out of 3 Series – Feb. 25, 26 and 27 if necessary
Teams TBD, Highest remaining seed to host, single elimination
The Championship will open on Feb. 24 with a quarterfinal match-up between No. 4 seed Lindenwood and No. 5 seed RIT. Thursday’s winner will advance to meet No. 1 seed Syracuse in the first semifinal on Feb. 25. No. 2 Penn State will then face. No. 3 Mercyhurst in Friday’s second semifinal with Friday’s winners advancing to Saturday’s final at 2 p.m. ET.
The winner of the 2022 CHA Championship will receive the conference’s automatic bid to the NCAA Women’s Ice Hockey Championship.
As the 2021-22 WCHA regular season champion and Julianne Bye Cup winner, MInnesota is the tournament’s top seed and is set to host No. 8 St. Thomas. No. 2 Ohio State hosts No. 7 St. Cloud State, No. 3 Wisconsin hosts No. 6 BEmidji State, while No. 4 MInnesota Duluth earned the final home ice advantage to host No. 5 MInnesota State.
The four winners of the best-of-three quarterfinals advances to the 2022 Final Faceoff, held March 5-6 at Ridder Arena in Minneapolis. The winner of the 2022 WCHA Final Faceoff receives the League’s automatic bid into the NCAA Women’s Ice Hockey Championship.
Pairings, locations, and start times for the Friday-Sunday, Feb. 25-27 best-of-three WCHA Quarterfinals:
No. 8 St. Thomas at No. 1 Minnesota (Ridder Arena – Minneapolis, Minn.) Game 1 – Friday, Feb. 25: 6 p.m. Game 2 – Saturday, Feb. 26: 4 p.m. Game 3 – Sunday, Feb. 27: 2 p.m. (if necessary)
No. 7 St. Cloud State at No. 2 Ohio State (OSU Ice Rink – Columbus, Ohio) Game 1 – Friday, Feb. 25: 5 p.m. CT / 6 p.m. ET Game 2 – Saturday, Feb. 26: 2 p.m. CT / 3 p.m. ET Game 3 – Sunday, Feb. 27: 2 p.m. CT / 3 p.m. ET (if necessary)
No. 6 Bemidji State at No. 3 Wisconsin (LaBahn Arena – Madison, Wis.) Game 1 – Friday, Feb. 25: 7 p.m. Game 2 – Saturday, Feb. 26: 3 p.m. Game 3 – Sunday, Feb. 27: 2 p.m. (if necessary)
No. 5 Minnesota State at No. 4 Minnesota Duluth (AMSOIL Arena – Duluth, Minn.) Game 1 – Friday, Feb. 25: 2 p.m. Game 2 – Saturday, Feb. 26: 2 p.m. Game 3 – Sunday, Feb. 27: 2 p.m. (if necessary)
2022 WCHA FINAL FACEOFF
The premier conference tournament in women’s college hockey, the 2022 WCHA Final Faceoff will be held March 5-6, 2022 at Ridder Arena in Minneapolis. Annually featuring a collection of the nation’s highest-ranked programs and best players, the WCHA’s four remaining teams will compete for the league’s playoff championship and automatic berth to the 2022 NCAA Tournament.
The league’s top event and best weekend of the year for college hockey fans, the two-day 2022 WCHA Final Faceoff weekend is a celebration of the sport’s past, present, and future.
Saturday, March 5, 2022 Semifinal Game 1 – No. 1 remaining seed vs. No. 4 remaining seed: 1 p.m. CT Semifinal Game 2 – No. 2 remaining seed vs. No. 3 remaining seed: 4 p.m. CT
Sunday, March 6, 2022 WCHA Championship – 1 p.m. CT
Sifters…
Robert Morris Names Head Coach… Former Robert Morris University Women’s Hockey Associate Head Coach Logan Bittle has been hired to re-boot the RMU program as its new Head Coach. Bittle’s announcement came Feb. 4th. You can read more about RMU’s new bench boss here ——-> USCHO.com Story, RMU Women’s Hockey Homepage Story
U18 Worlds Back On… News of the IIHF U18 Women’s World Championship broke at the Olympics last week in a tweet by the IIHF.
The IIHF leadership met the media in #Beijing2022, discussed the #Olympic#icehockey tournaments, development, #Milano2026 and announced updates on the events that will be postponed from January to summer.
6+ Million Watched… Over 3.54 million viewers in the US and 2.7 million in Canada tuned in to watch the Women’s Olympic Gold Medal game between the US and Canada. It was the most watched hockey game, at any level, in the US since 2019. Given the game was aired live at 11:10pm EST, you can bet those numbers would be bigger had the game been played at an earlier hour. Beijing is 13-hours ahead of EST. Lots of tired eyes the next day, mine included.
US-Canada women’s gold medal hockey game on NBC averaged 3.54 million viewers. That’s more viewers than any NHL game this season. And second most watched hockey game in United States since 2019.
Topic for another post… So, there is a market. A large one. How does the sport tap into a meaningful % of those 6 million who watched on a regular basis… and not just once every 4 years.
Busy Spring for Recruiting… D-I college coaches will have a packed Spring in terms of recruiting events to get to before the NCAA Women’s Hockey ‘Quiet Period’ begins on April 18. USA Hockey National Development Camp tryouts, U.S. District Play-Downs, U.S. National Championships, as well as various US and Canadian Academy ID camps, Canadian league and Provincial Championships are just a few of the events on the calendar college coaches will get to. Coaches have approximately 9 weeks left for off-campus evaluations of recruits in grade 10 before the June 15 call date commences.
A NCAA ‘Quiet Period’ is defined as where NCAA coaches may not conduct any in-person, off-campus evaluations or conduct off-campus face-to-face contact with recruits or their family members from April 18 until June 1. Recruits who are in grade 11 & above may take unofficial visits and have face-to-face contact with coaches as long as it takes place on their campus. There is also a NCAA ‘Dead Period from noon March 17 to noon the 21st., which is defined as a period of time when no on or off-campus evaluations or face-to-face contact may be had. In addition, no unofficial or official visits may take place.
Buckle Up!
Help Women’s College Hockey, Go Attend A Game… For years the National Championship tournament has not had what coaches would call ‘True Bracket Integrity… meaning #1 plays #8, #2 plays #7 and so on. College coaches want that. The NCAA was more concerned with saving money, not flying teams to certain sites, then organizing a proper championship experience for teams. That mindset is somewhat gone in 2022 with an expanded field to 11 teams. However, part of the criteria the NCAA uses to determine who plays at each regional site, is based on the potential for a playoff atmosphere. A playoff atmosphere to the NCAA means fans in the stands and to get butts in the seats, means there has to be a local interest in the teams competing… to the NCAA anyway.
Potentially you could have at least two of three teams at a regional site who are geographical close in proximity to one another, without bracket integrity intact. May be you have the #1, #4, and #5 teams, rather than a schedule that protects the top seed.
So here is how you can help… Go attend NCAA regional tournament games no matter your affiliation with teams there. If you’re a fan of women’s college hockey – pack the stands and sell venues out. Make it so the attendance issue isn’t one the NCAA can hang its hat on to create a schedule where they can save money.
Better attendance helps ensure future NCAA tournaments have true bracket integrity and a better national championship experience for our student-athletes–which should be what matters most.
MN State HS Tourney Underway… There aren’t a lot of states who do a better job of putting on a state tournament than Minnesota. Class ‘A’ got underway yesterday and Class ‘AA’ gets underway today. All games are played at the Excel Energy Center, home to the MN Wild. You can watch all games HERE for FREE.
Tune in Thursday to watch the State Girls Hockey Class AA Quarterfinals! These games will be free to view thanks to the support of @TheUrgencyRoom https://t.co/IdfNDVQVZ6 will also be covering the consol. and 3rd place games. https://t.co/CFNub6u5Fp…
-Streams for games in the ECAC can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams in the WCHA can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams in Hockey East this year can be found HERE. Hockey East once again is streaming all games live and for FREE.
-Streams for CHA games with the exception of Penn St. can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams for NEWHA games can be found at each teams’ website. Subscriptions may be necessary to watch games.
NCAA Coaching Changes…Keep up with all the coaching changes across D-I and D-III HERE.
Give Someone a Stick Tap… Know someone in women’s college hockey who’s work needs some recognition? Nominate them for WCH.org’s monthly ‘Stick Tap’HERE or Email us at: womenscollegehockey@gmail.com
Recruiting Events/League Online Directory… Find all the recruiting events on WCH.org right HERE. Want to add your event? Click HERE to fill out our WCH.org event form.
Grant Kimball is founder and contributing writer at Women’s College Hockey.org and beginning his 3rd season as an Assistant Coach with the Yale University women’s hockey program. Grant has developed an experienced perspective in the world of women’s ice hockey, having coached and recruited players from across the globe during his 25+ year amatuer and NCAA coaching career. He has coached at 6 NCAA DIII and DI programs in the NCHA (D3), the CHA, WCHA, Hockey East, ECAC, and the Ivy League (DI). Beyond coaching, Grant served as a site representative for the 2019 NCAA quarterfinal of the D-I NCAA Tournament. He also currently serves as an Officer with the American Hockey Coaches Association as Vice President of Membership and sits on the AHCA’s Women’s Hockey Executive Committee.
A quick apology for the lapse in recent coverage everyone. Rest assured, The Women’s College Hockey Pipeline is back! In September we did a post about coaching changes that occur late into the summer or early Fall and how it affects programs and coaches. Well, this exact situation happened to yours truly a few weeks ago.
My fellow and now former assistant coaching partner at Yale, Danielle Blanchard, has left to take over the UMASS-Boston D-III program as its new Head Coach as of October 18th. As the lone Assistant Coach with our program now, I had to re-focus my priorities and something had to give–the Pipeline was it.
With that said, I want to extend my congratulations to Danielle on getting her first NCAA Head Coaching opportunity. And now, with things firmly under control, it’s back to the Women’s College Hockey Pipeline!
NCAA Expands D-I National Tourney
Big news yesterday from the NCAA Championships Oversight Committee (COC) when they announced approval of expanding the D-I National Collegiate Women’s Ice Hockey Championships from 8 to 11 teams as soon as this season 2022 or in 2023. You can read the official announcement HERE. Here’s the back story and timeline.
The NCAA National Championship Tournament has had a field of 8 teams. Beginning with the 2022-2023 season, the New England Women’s Hockey Alliance (NEWHA) will become eligible to receive an automatic bid to the Tournament under NCAA rules. Also under NCAA rules, 50% of the tournament field must come from conferences that are auto-bid eligible. The NEWHA would be the 5th auto-bid eligible conference in D-I women’s Ice Hockey. The D-I tourney would thus become out of balance with it’s current 8 team field format.
This issue didn’t come out of the blue for the D-I coaching body or the tournament committee. Work was being done as early as the 2018-2019 season in anticipation of the NEWHA beginning play in 19-20 with 6 teams – the min. needed to attain an auto-bid to the NCAA tourney after 2 consecutive seasons of play. Year 1 for the NEWHA was 19-20, then COVID hit and the league did not have a traditional season. Year 2 for the NEWHA is this season, 21-22.
In the Spring of 2021, the D-I women’s coaching body creates a tournament expansion committee to explore a viable proposal for consideration by the COC. After much discussion, deliberation, and consultation with D-I women’s hockey stakeholders, an official proposal is made to the NCAA COC.
September 10, 2021, the NCAA COC tables a proposal put forth by the D-I Women’s Ice Hockey Committee for an expanded tournament of 10 teams. Sighting lack of funds, the NCAA agreed on the merit of the proposal but did not vote one way or the other.
In it’s guidance back to D-I coaching body, a member of the COC asked if the coaching body considered more teams, like 12 instead of 10. Also on September 10th, the NCAA granted Men’s Hockey an extra day in between it’s NCAA Tournament regional semi-final and final round days.
On October 26, 2021 Phase II of the NCAA requested independent gender equity review conducted by the law firm of Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP is made public. (do yourself a favor and read it–it will make you cringe). The disparity between monetary resources and percentage of student-athlete participation allowed between Women’s and Men’s Ice Hockey is highlighted in the review as having the greatest variance of any NCAA sport where women and men compete in the same sport. A fire-storm of negative publicity as a result of the review on social media ensues.
On November 2nd, Women’s Hockey D-I coaches hold emergency zoom meeting to discuss options of tournament expansion now that Phase II of the NCAA gender equity review is public. It comes to light, the COC will meet on Nov. 10 to discuss the possibility of Women’s Ice Hockey Tournament expansion. A social media campaign is unveiled to educate people about the disparities in women’s D-I ice hockey using the hashtag #CloseTheGapNCAA and #TimeFor12Teams2022.
Nov. 10th, the NCAA COC acts and approves expanding the NCAA D-I Women’s Ice Hockey Championship Tournament to 11 teams for 2022 or 2023. 11 teams is 27% of the eligible teams in D-I women’s ice hockey. It’s also the exact % of teams the D-I men’s tournament has.
This is an ongoing story with many intricacies. We will keep you updated and informed as details develop.
Olympic Qualification Tournaments… The IIHF is hosting the last of 3 Women’s Ice Hockey Olympic qualification tournaments to determine the last 3 teams to go to Beijing for the 2022 Winter Olympics. Some NCAA rosters are heavily impacted. All games are streamed live – you can find the game schedule and streaming links below. There are 26 NCAA players on team rosters. Several of which some from NCAA D-III and Canadian U-Sport programs. We’ll have a full report and breakdown next week.
📺How to watch the Women's Final Olympic Qualification live today and during the weekend:
MN High School Hockey Underway… The 2021-2022 MN High School Girls Hockey Season is just getting started with most teams playing their first games over the next week. Your best source to keep up to date with news, scores, standings, and of course – the MN State Tournament – can be found right HERE at The MN Girls Hockey Hub.
New England Prep School Hockey… The NE Prep. season is right around the corner from starting up in another week or two. Traditionally, prep players will play a fall sport or activity commitment which causes the perceived ‘late start’ by most NE prep teams. To keep up with schedules, scores, and standings etc, you can find it all right HERE.
NCAA Dead Period Ends Friday at Midnight… For D-I schools that subscribe to and offer National Letter of Intent, i.e. Athletic Scholarships, the NCAA Dead Period ends tonight at Midnight. Beginning Monday of this week, recruits who are in grade 12 and were offered a NLI to sign, had the ability to do so with the school of their choice. The Dead Period does not allow for any off-campus contact between D-I college coaches and recruits or their families on or off of its campus. The dead period rule was put into effect to help recruits make their college decision w/ out pressure from coaches during this week.
Until Next Time…
21-22 Streaming Info
-Streams for games in the ECAC can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games in the ECAC.
-Streams in the WCHA can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams in Hockey East this year can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams for CHA games with the exception of Penn St. can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary.
-Streams for NEWHA games can be found at each teams’ website. Subscriptions may be necessary to watch games.
NCAA Coaching Changes…Keep up with all the coaching changes across D-I and D-III HERE.
Give Someone a Stick Tap… Know someone in women’s college hockey who’s work needs some recognition? Nominate them for WCH.org’s monthly ‘Stick Tap’HERE or Email us at: womenscollegehockey@gmail.com
Recruiting Events/League Online Directory… Find all the recruiting events on WCH.org right HERE. Want to add your event? Click HERE to fill out our WCH.org event form.
Grant Kimball is founder and contributing writer at Women’s College Hockey.org and beginning his 3rd season as an Assistant Coach with the Yale University women’s hockey program. Grant has developed an experienced perspective in the world of women’s ice hockey, having coached and recruited players from across the globe during his 25+ year amatuer and NCAA coaching career. He has coached at 6 NCAA DIII and DI programs in the NCHA (D3), the CHA, WCHA, Hockey East, ECAC, and the Ivy League (DI). Beyond coaching, Grant served as a site representative for the 2019 NCAA quarterfinal of the D-I NCAA Tournament. He also currently serves as an Officer with the American Hockey Coaches Association as Vice President of Membership and sits on the AHCA’s Women’s Hockey Executive Committee.
Game results, box scores, and statistics come directly from the NCAA Stats Site (found here).
Video highlight links are to individual program produced media, some of which may be found on team twitter or other social media accounts – so scroll the feed to see the game highlights.
Postgame links are any postgame video produced by individual programs and found on either team websites or social media accounts.
No link… for video highlights or postgame? Assume there was none available at the time of our post.
Game Results, Box Scores, Video Highlights, Postgame
20 games played, 1 Thursday, 9 Friday, and 10 on Saturday.
The home team went 13-6-1 last weekend.
Colgate @ RIT Saturday drew 1350 in attendance, the largest crowd of the weekend. RPI/M’Hurst came in 2nd with 726 on Saturday. According to the NCAA Stats Site, 8,140 spectators attended the 20 games scheduled, an ave. of 407/game.
The average margin of victory per win this weekend was 4.65 goals. Exactly half of the games this weekend saw 5 goals or more scored by the winning team.
SLU/Penn State played the first overtime 3 on 3 game this year… with no winner.
St. Thomas played its first ever games as a member of Division I and the WCHA.
There we 7 shutouts.
Minnesota-State Mankato had the furthest road trip of any program this weekend… according to Apple Maps, it’s 1425 miles from Mankato, MN to North Andover, MA where Merrimack College is located.
Weekly Top 10 Rankings
We publish two nationally recognized ‘Top 10’ polls – 1) USCHO.com Women’s Top 10 Poll and 2) USA Today / USA Hockey Magazine Top 10 Women’s Poll.
The USCHO.com ranking will be listed first and the USA Today / USA Hockey Magazine ranking listed second when identifying rankings for teams. Example, ‘#4/5’
USCHO Division I Women’s Poll – September 27, 2021
Others receiving votes: Clarkson 17, Harvard 9, Providence 3, Penn State 2
USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine Women’s College Hockey Poll
September 28, 2021
# RK
Team
Points
(First Place Votes)
Last Poll
Record
Weeks in Poll
1
University of Wisconsin
190
(19)
1
2-0-0
3
2
Northeastern University
163
2
0-0-0
3
3
Ohio State University
143
3
2-0-0
3
4
University of Minnesota
120
5
0-0-0
3
5
University of Minnesota Duluth
107
4
0-0-0
3
6
Colgate University
106
6
2-0-0
3
7
Cornell University
65
7
0-0-0
3
8
Boston College
59
8
0-0-0
3
9
Princeton University
40
9
0-0-0
3
10
Clarkson University
22
NR
2-0-0
1
Others receiving votes: Quinnipiac 12, Providence 10, Harvard 6, Penn State 2.
More Coaches Polls
The NEWHA and Hockey East have released their 21-22 Preseason Coaches Polls. In just its third year, Long Island University claims the NEWHA’s top spot while in Hockey East, Northeastern was picked to finish first by league coaches. You can see both polls below.
2021-2022 New England Women’s Hockey Alliance Preseason Coaches Poll
RANK
TEAM
POINTS (FIRST PLACE VOTES)
1.
LIU
25 pts. (5)
2.
Sacred Heart
19 pts. (1)
3.
Franklin Pierce
18 pts.
4.
Saint Anselm
14 pts.
5.
Saint Michael’s
9 pts.
6.
Post
5 pts.
2021-2022 Hockey East Preseason Coaches Poll
Rank
Team (1st Place Votes)
Pts.
1.
Northeastern (9)
90
2.
Providence (1)
75
3.
Boston College
70
4.
UConn
67
5.
Boston University
59
6.
Vermont
52
7.
Maine
43
8.
New Hampshire
40
9.
Holy Cross
25
10.
Merrimack
19
Hockey Canada Cancels Under-18’s
Originally this was going to be a little boo-hoo blurb in our Sifters section, but as I got going on it, it became what it is below.
Monday evening, Hockey Canada announced the cancellation of three events slated to take place this fall due to ongoing COVID concerns. The 2021 National Women’s Under-18 Championships was one of them, an event cancelled last Fall and one many NCAA schools were looking forward to getting to. So our questions is this: Was there back-up plan?
Here is part of Hockey Canada’s official statement, “Despite a strong desire to work with three great communities to host the top players at various levels across the country this season, the health and safety of all participants and the communities at large continues to be of the utmost importance to Hockey Canada. The ongoing pandemic, in addition to the vaccination status of some international teams, has left us with no other option. We believe the decision to cancel these fall events is the safest decision given the ongoing uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic at a local level, as well as the uncertainty around countries and regions being able to safely compete...”
The Canadian Tire Para Hockey Cup and 2021 World Junior ‘A’ Challenge were the two other events cancelled. Other countries were set to compete at these two events. Looking at the above statement, we can buy the rationale for cancelling based on Canada requiring certain types of vaccines for entry. If teams can’t meet the requirement, than you have no choice but to cancel the event. But the Women’s U-18 don’t involve outside countries – just provincial U-18 teams. If conditions are such, that the intended locale doesn’t meet Hockey Canada standards, move to plan B. Why not announce a postponement with a clear plan to either move to a plan B – which would have already been figured out in advance – or a path investigate alternative locations or dates? Didn’t Hockey Canada just go through this a few months back with the Women’s Worlds being canceled? Didn’t Hockey Canada already have a front row seat for this?
A quick glance of Canadian Major Junior or Tier II Jr. A league schedules tells us games are being played across provincial lines, even US based teams are crossing into Canada. So what got missed? The development of a ‘what if’ plan to hold the event elsewhere if conditions warranted, that’s what. Organizations have had to learn to adapt in our new COVID world–event organizers need back-up plans! NCAA – you are on the clock too, should COVID concerns derail any championships in its intended locale, have a plan B. Insert hand slapping face emoji here. What’s the saying, history is doomed to repeat itself? Until it doesn’t.
Like most things in life you either want to do something and can. You want to do something but can’t, because of some limitation preventing you. Or – you just don’t want to do it. Curious to know where this situation falls. Health and safety should never be compromised – no question. The lack of explanation about possible alternatives leaves a lot to be answered. Where on the priority list does the Women’s Under-18 Championships fall?
Kudos to Manitoba Hockey for their statement HERE about putting in the work to find an alternative. Leadership comes in all forms, but sometimes, all it takes is effort.
Sifters
ECAC YouTube Page… The ECAC has its own YouTube page found HERE. Viewers can watch game highlights of ECAC teams. We hope to see more highlights this season.
CHA Celebrates 20 Years… College Hockey America is celebrating its 20th season as a D-I conference with five insitutitions–Lindenwood, Mercyhurst, Penn State, Rochester Institute of Technology, and Syracuse. The league was founded back in 2002-2003 as a four-team conference with Findlay University, Mercyhurst University, Niagara University, and Wayne State University. Sadly, only one program still remains active – Mercyhurst. Quinnipiac came into the CHA for the 2004-2005 after being an independent after Findlay dropped its program. Even Ohio State was a conference member of the CHA for a brief time prior to the 04-05 season before becoming a member of the WCHA (again). Mercyhurst has been to the NCAA tournament 17 times, Robert Morris twice, RIT and Syracuse once each.
CHA NCAA Auto-bid Situation… D-I NCAA conferences in women’s ice hockey must have 6 active members to be eligible for an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament. With Robert Morris’ program still in doubt of starting back up, the CHA would need to find a 6th team by the ’23-’24 season or be in jeopardy of losing its auto bid. Conferences have a two-year grace period to find a 6th team under NCAA rules.
Hockey East Continues Free Streams… Hockey East will once again stream all of its conference games online, live, and for free. You can read the official announcement from Hockey East HERE. Hockey East provided free streams of its women’s and men’s game last season. Also in the coming days will be an announcement about the 21-22 TV schedule of Hockey East women’s and men’s games on NESN and NESN+.
2022 Olympic Schedule Released, Qualifying Tournaments Up Next… The IIHF announced the women’s hockey 2022 Olympic schedule last week. You can find it HERE. Games are set to begin Feb. 3, 2022 and the Gold Medal Game will be Thursday Feb. 17, 2022. Seven nations have already qualified, Canada, China (host–automatic qualification granted) Finland, Japan, Russian Olympic Committee, Switzerland, and The United States. 3 spots are still up for grabs. These will be determined by 2 qualifying tournaments held below:
Olympic Pre-Qualification Round 2 (7-10 October 2021)
Group F
Group G
Group H
(in Nottingham/GBR)
(in Torre Pellice/ITA)
(in Bytom/POL)
Korea
Italy
Netherlands
Great Britain
Kazakhstan
Poland
Slovenia
Spain
Mexico
Iceland
Chinese Taipei
Turkey
Final Olympic Qualification (11-14 November 2021)
Group C
Group D
Group E
(in Chomutov/CZE)
(in Fussen/GER)
(in Lulea/SWE)
Czech Republic
Germany
Sweden
Hungary
Denmark
France
Norway
Austria
Slovakia
Q6
Q5
Q4
OWHA Mandates Vaccines… The Ontario Women’s Hockey Association, in consultation with Ontario health officials, is mandating as a condition of eligibility, all players born 2009 or earlier to be fully vaccinated (2 shots + 14 days after 2nd shot) no later than Nov. 1. You can read there official statement HERE.
Stop & Go Offsides… We mentioned our displeasure about the new USA Hockey offsides rule. Looks like former Pittsburgh Penguin Ian Moran feels similarly – see his tweet below.
-Streams for games in the ECAC can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games in the ECAC.
-Streams in the WCHA can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams in Hockey East this year can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams for CHA games with the exception of Penn St. can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary.
-Streams for NEWHA games can be found at each teams’ website. Subscriptions may be necessary to watch games.
NCAA Coaching Changes…Keep up with all the coaching changes across D-I and D-III HERE.
Give Someone a Stick Tap… Know someone in women’s college hockey who’s work needs some recognition? Nominate them for WCH.org’s monthly ‘Stick Tap’HERE or Email us at: womenscollegehockey@gmail.com
Recruiting Events/League Online Directory… Find all the recruiting events on WCH.org right HERE. Want to add your event? Click HERE to fill out our WCH.org event form.
Grant Kimball is founder and contributing writer at Women’s College Hockey.org and beginning his 3rd season as an Assistant Coach with the Yale University women’s hockey program. Grant has developed an experienced perspective in the world of women’s ice hockey, having coached and recruited players from across the globe during his 25+ year amatuer and NCAA coaching career. He has coached at 6 NCAA DIII and DI programs in the NCHA (D3), the CHA, WCHA, Hockey East, ECAC, and the Ivy League (DI). Beyond coaching, Grant served as a site representative for the 2019 NCAA quarterfinal of the D-I NCAA Tournament. He also currently serves as an Officer with the American Hockey Coaches Association as Vice President of Membership and sits on the AHCA’s Women’s Hockey Executive Committee.
NCAA Coaching Changes…Keep up with all the coaching changes across D-I and D-III HERE.
Give Someone a Stick Tap… Know someone in women’s college hockey who’s work needs some recognition? Nominate them for WCH.org’s monthly ‘Stick Tap’HERE or Email us at: womenscollegehockey@gmail.com
Recruiting Events/League Online Directory… Find all the recruiting events on WCH.org right HERE. Want to add your event? Click HERE to fill out our WCH.org event form.
Streaming Info-Updated as of 9-21-21
-Streams for games in the ECAC can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games in the ECAC.
-Streams in the WCHA can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams in Hockey East this year can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams for CHA games with the exception of Penn St. can be found HERE. Subscriptions will be necessary to watch games.
-Streams for NEWHA games can be found at each teams’ website. Subscriptions may be necessary to watch games.
NCAA D-I Weekend Game Schedule
With a weeks worth of regular season practice under their belts, quite a few NCAA D-I teams are playing games for real now. Some games on the weekend schedule are exhibition games. The new NCAA Stat Site schedule doesn’t reference whether games are Exhibition, Conference, or Non-Conference, which was a nice feature of CHS (collegehockeystats).
Several pre-season USCHO.com Top 10 ranked teams, as well as those just outside the Top 10, are in action this weekend.
Quinnipiac, just outside the Top 10 hosts Maine for a 2-game Friday/Saturday series at home. Clarkson, who is also just outside the Top 10 faces off against Sacred Heart at home for a pair of games Friday and Saturday. #9 Penn State welcomes St. Lawrence for a Thursday/Friday series. #6 Colgate and RIT play a home and home Friday and Saturday. #3 Ohio State hosts new WCHA member St. Thomas Friday/Saturday in Columbus. And #1 Wisconsin travels to North Andover, MA to take on Merrimack for a pair of games.
You can see the full weekend Thursday, Friday, and Saturday schedule below. All times are Eastern Standard Time. Streaming information can be found above.
Updated Coaching Changes… Nichols College has hired former Quinnipiac Head Coach Michael Barrett. Barrett coached the Bobcats from 2002-2008 before moving into an Athletic Department Development role.
Josh Glaser has been hired as RIT’s newest Assistant Coach. Josh has spent time with Vermont, Colgate, and Utica in various roles.
Kate Leary has been hired at Merrimack College as an Assistant Coach. She replaces Stephanie Moberg who is now at Dartmouth College. Leary was a standout at Boston College where she amassed 85 pts in 149 games.
Zoey Pellowitz iis the new Graduate Assistant Coach at Nazareth College. She just completed her playing career at Manhattanville.
Mike Frost is the new Assistant Coach at Johnson & Wales.
Transfers, Where Are They Now… It was quite a year for the transfer. Nicole Haase of USCHO.com has compiled a thorough list of which players have departed certain programs and where they wound up at for the season. You can find her complete list HERE.
Until Next Time…
Grant Kimball is founder and contributing writer at Women’s College Hockey.org and beginning his 3rd season as an Assistant Coach with the Yale University women’s hockey program. Grant has developed an experienced perspective in the world of women’s ice hockey, having coached and recruited players from across the globe during his 25+ year amatuer and NCAA coaching career. He has coached at 6 NCAA DIII and DI programs in the NCHA (D3), the CHA, WCHA, Hockey East, ECAC, and the Ivy League (DI). Beyond coaching, Grant served as a site representative for the 2019 NCAA quarterfinal of the D-I NCAA Tournament. He also currently serves as an Officer with the American Hockey Coaches Association as Vice President of Membership and sits on the AHCA’s Women’s Hockey Executive Committee.
