2022 U18 Women's World Championship: Day 6 - Gold and Bronze Medal Games →

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Gold Medal Game

Canada 3, USA 2

Canada coach Howie Draper said his team was coming together and I should have believed him. They peaked at exactly the right time and came out flying on Monday night, putting the US in a 3-0 hole they couldn't dig themselves out of.

If you'd have said before the tournament that not only would Canada be playing in a quarterfinal, but that they’d be happy they did, I'm not sure anyone would have agreed with you. But it turns out having those extra 60 minutes of ice time together may have been the difference between gold and silver.

"We needed that game to find ourselves and find our unity on the ice," said Draper.

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2022 U18 Women's World Championship: Day 5 - Semifinals →

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Finland 1, Canada 2

You wouldn’t know it from watching this tournament, but Finland's best finish in the U18 Women's World Championships were bronze medals in 2011 and 2019. They made a huge stride forward this year, taking down Canada for the first time at this age group in the preliminary round.

It has been truly amazing to see the level of competition among the teams at this tournament. If this group is any indication, the future of women's hockey is looking incredibly bright.

Their coach, Mira Kuisma, was fighting back tears and struggling to put into words her thoughts on the game in the postgame press conference, knowing how well her team has played and how close they were to making history.

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2022 IIHF U18 Women's World Championship: Slovakia Belongs Here →

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The "glorified doorbell cam" footage that former VP writer Kirsten captured and shared in 2019 is an infamous part of women's hockey lore at this point.

The high angle fish lens feed was impossible to watch and, when asked about it, the IIHF blamed the local organizing committee (LOC).

But what you might not remember about the doorbell cam is that it was from the 2020 IIHF U18 Women's World Championships held in Bratislava, Slovakia – thus they were placing the blame for the poor streaming situation on the Slovak Ice Hockey Federation. The darlings of this year's 2022 U18 tournament are ultimately supported by the federation that couldn't provide more than a doorbell cam for the top division IIHF U18 Women's Wolrd Championship in 2019.

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2022 U18 Women's World Championship: Day 3 →

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United States 7, Canada 0

After watching the first few games, it sure felt like the Americans were the best team in the tournament, but I don't think anyone could have foreseen the blowout USA engineered Thursday evening. It was a masterclass in puck possession – something their coach Katie Lachapelle emphasized on Wednesday's off day as being important for her team's success. The less time the opponent has the puck, the less dangerous they are. The Americans made sure they held the puck, distributed it around the ice, and took smart, deliberate shots to get the win.

Seven different players scored the goals for the Americans and 12 players tallied a point. It was a total team effort as skaters up and down the line sheet took advantage of their time on ice. Laila Edwards' late goal moved her to a tie for first place in scoring this tournament with seven points. Teammate Sydney Morrow had her seventh assist of the tournament on Edwards' goal.

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Stray Thoughts #1 from the 2022 IIHF U18 Women's World Championship →

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We're not quite halfway through the tournament, with eight of fourteen games complete and one rest day under our belts.

I've gathered some interesting quotes and stories that haven't made it into the daily notebooks, but still should see the light of day, so I'll try to do these after the off days and probably after the medal games.

This photo from the IIHF of USA's Laila Edwards and Finland's Tuuli Tallinen just really puts in stark relief what I'm talking about when I'm mentioning Edwards' reach. Tallinen is listed at 5'9" and would be one of the taller players on the ice in most women's hockey games. Look at the distance between their gloves (not too significant) and the distance between the blades of their sticks (an absolute chasm).

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‘We Have To Keep Moving Forward:’ McKenzie Coan's Advocacy Goes Hand-In-Hand With Her Swimming →

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Growing up in Clarkesville, Georgia, McKenzie Coan has vivid memories of attending sporting events at Clemson University with her father, an alum of the school. There were many football and men’s basketball games, but she said she wasn’t really exposed to a lot of women’s NCAA sports as a kid. In fact, she didn’t even really know they existed, or that playing sports in college was an option for women. 
 
“I didn’t know what kind of opportunities existed for females who wanted to compete in college. I didn’t know what that looked like,” she said. 
 
It wasn’t until Coan got involved with the U.S. Para swimming team as a teenager that she began to understand the importance of women’s college sports. Now 25, Coan is a three-time Paralympian and has six medals — four of them gold — to her name. Yet her college experience remains foundational to her, both in and out of the pool.

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Hockey Humanitarian Award Finalist Spotlight: Adjusting to COVID times, RPI’s Price finds volunteering as outlet to ‘take back control over my life’ →

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Rensselaer junior defender Hannah Price was an outspoken advocate in her community long before she stepped on campus in Troy, N.Y.

But with the transition to college and the pressures of being a student athlete, heading into her sophomore year, she hadn’t yet explored opportunities to give back in Troy.

In the fall of 2020, RPI was under a policy of de-densification and Price and her classmates were not allowed on campus. But she felt it was important to be in town and close to teammates. Eventually, the team was informed their hockey season was canceled and Price found herself with time on her hands.

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NCAA Women's Hockey: Ohio State are the 2022 National Champions →

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Kenzie Hauswirth's shot from the near boards deflected off the skate of UMD's Nina Jobst-Smith past Emma Söderberg to score the game-winning goal and give the Buckeyes their first-ever National Championship Sunday.

After not getting on the board first for much of the playoffs, OSU had opened the scoring with a hustle play from Paetyn Levis and Clair DeGeorge on the power play. Ohio State averaged just less than a power play goal a game this season, scoring 36 in 37 games.

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Ohio State's 'Cinderella story' started with hiring of Nadine Muzerall →

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STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — When the Ohio State women’s hockey team ended its season earlier than it would have liked in the 2021 national semifinal, coach Nadine Muzerall said, “We get so fixated on this last game, and your last game is miserable unless you win the whole thing.”

At the time, she was hoping to remind her players of all they’d accomplished that season. This year, she has no such problem. There are no platitudes and reminders to look for the good. This season, there is no being miserable, only bliss.

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NCAA Division III hockey: Women’s hockey a natural fit at Milwaukee School of Engineering →

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When an alumna donated a rumored $4 million dollars earmarked for expansion of women’s sports opportunities at Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE), it seemed natural that one of the first programs added was women’s hockey. The university already fields a men’s hockey team and has their own rink, so few structural changes were necessary.

One big missing piece at the Kern Center, the recreation facility on campus that houses the ice rink in the basement, was a need for women’s locker rooms and additional coaches offices in order to immediately add five new women’s teams – lacrosse, hockey, swim, golf and bowling – as well as expand their women’s track and field options.

The MSOE men’s team has had varsity status since the 1998-99 season and play in the Northern Collegiate Hockey Association (NCHA), where it is expected the women will play.

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Women’s Hockey: 43% of players competing in Beijing Olympics played NCAA D-I hockey →

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Of the 230 women rostered on 10 teams set to drop the puck next Thursday in the 2022 Beijing Olympics, 102 played at least one season of NCAA Division I hockey. Five more women are committed to start their NCAA career next season.

In total, 107 women have connections to North American collegiate programs. They represent 32 Division I schools, one Division III school and two U-Sports programs. Twenty-nine of the 105 women are currently enrolled in college or have remaining eligibility in their collegiate career.

Every Division I conference is represented. There are four CHA teams, 10 ECAC teams, nine Hockey East teams, one NEWHA team and eight WCHA teams (including since-shuttered North Dakota).

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COVID cancellations prevent Princeton goalie Rachel McQuigge’s men’s hockey debut →

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On Saturday evening, New England Hockey Journal contributor Mark Divver tweeted that the University of New Hampshire men’s program looked into using one of the UNH women’s team goalies as their backup but couldn’t fulfill NCAA requirements in time to make it happen.

While New Hampshire looked into the option of dressing a women’s team goalie as backup, but was unable to follow through, another team had completed the paperwork in time.

Before their weekend games against Harvard and Yale were canceled, the Princeton men’s team was set to have women’s goalie, senior Rachel McQuigge, on the bench as their backup goalie.

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Division I Women’s Hockey: NCAA removes minimizing flights from bracket selection criteria →

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The NCAA formally approved the expansion of the the women’s hockey tournament to 11 teams for the 2021-22 season yesterday. But two big changes to the women’s bracket selection process were also quietly made.

The women’s hockey pre-championship manual has always included a stipulation to prioritize cost reduction and fewer flights when setting up the quarterfinal matchups. “Pairings in the quarterfinal round shall be based primarily on the teams’ geographical proximity to one another, regardless of their region, in order to avoid air travel in quarterfinal-round games whenever possible.” (View the 2019 pre-championship manual here. Criteria on pages 13-14.)

As first reported by Todd Milewski in the Wisconsin State Journal, that criteria has been removed from women’s hockey championship selection criteria.

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Division I Women’s Hockey: NCAA approves immediate expansion of bracket; 11 teams to compete in 2022 National Championship tournament →

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The NCAA announced Thursday it has approved an immediate expansion of the women’s ice hockey championship bracket from eight teams to 11 teams. The expansion will take place for the 2022 tournament. The 2022 Frozen Four is being hosted at Penn State March 18-20, 2022.

Per the release: “The 2022 National Collegiate Women’s Ice Hockey Championship will feature the top five seeds in the tournament receiving a first-round bye. The fifth-seeded team will play at the campus site of one of the top four seeds. Three first-round games will be played at the campus sites of three of the top four seeds in the tournament.

The winners of the first-round games will have a day off before playing in the quarterfinals. The tournament will stay on its current schedule since no weekends will be added with this format.”

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NCAA Division I Women’s Hockey: Coaches, teams organize on social media to demand expanded tournament field →

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The NCAA Championship Oversight Committee will convene November 10th to immediately reconsider the petition to expand the women’s hockey tournament from 8 to 12 teams for this season.

According to UMD coach Maura Crowell, this comes as a response to the findings from the report published by Kaplan, Hecker and Fink (KHF) law offices last week detailing gender inequities in the NCAA. (Read more about what the report said about college hockey here.)

The report, published on October 25, detailed gender inequities across a number of NCAA sports, but the disparities in hockey were particularly bad. With the new meeting a week away, it was important to make sure the information in the report continues to be noticed, discussed, disseminated and taken seriously.

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Phase II NCAA external gender equity review report details disparities in women’s, men’s college hockey →

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After videos went viral last March detailing the inferior weight room setup provided to the women’s basketball championship, NCAA president Mark Emmert commissioned an external gender equity review across all sports.

Phase one of the report came out in early August and focused specifically on men’s and women’s basketball. Monday’s report was the second phase and detailed inequities across all other NCAA-sponsored sports.

The 154 page report can be found here and it should be required reading for anyone involved in sports. The majority of the report is a breakdown of inequities in individual sports, but the opening 60 pages do a stellar job of showing how the problems shown therein are systemic, problematic and fixable.

This report contained no information that was surprising or groundbreaking to anyone that has spent time around the NCAA and in particular, women’s college hockey. The inequities are not new. While helpful to have the information gathered and reported from an outside source and freely available to the general public, it also does not matter if the report does not incite major change.

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Women’s DI College Hockey: How freedom and chaos beget success at Colgate →

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It’s impossible to follow the Colgate women’s hockey team without seeing their motto “We Play Free” hashtagged on nearly every social media post. It’s not just a marketing tactic and it’s not tied to the school’s Raider mascot. It’s a directive.

Or better yet, a declaration.

While much of the hockey world is predicated on systems – that is, a firm set of tactics that define how a team plays – the coaches at Colgate teach a system-free approach. When they say “We Play Free,” they mean freedom on the ice to be creative and to make mistakes.

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Northeastern’s Aerin Frankel wins 2021 Patty Kazmaier Award →

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Northeastern senior goaltender Aerin Frankel has been awarded the 2021 Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award. The honors were presented live on NHL Network this year as the in-person Patty Kazmaier Ceremony was cancelled due to COVID-19.

The award, which is in its 24th year, is presented annually to the top player in NCAA Division I women’s hockey by the USA Hockey Foundation.

Women’s Division I College Hockey: Fontaine’s overtime goal sends Northeastern to their first-ever national championship game →

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ERIE, Pa. – The Northeastern Huskies advanced to their first-ever NCAA championship game with a 3-2 overtime win over Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs Thursday night at Erie Insurance Arena.

Senior defender Skylar Fontaine intercepted a pass at the blue line and skated across the goal before shooting back at the far post to beat UMD goalie Emma Soderberg and win the game for Northeastern with 26 seconds left in the overtime period.