Women’s College Hockey: Current and former DI and DIII players will represent USA at FISU World University Winter Games →

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The World University Games are the second-largest multi-sport winter event in the world, after the Winter Olympics and are put on every two years by the International University Sports Federation (FISU) as “a celebration of international university sports and culture.” While the competition is a large and competitive event for countries all around the world, it has failed to gain much traction here in America. 

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U.S. Feeds Off Record Crowd to Take 3-0 Rivalry Series Lead →

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The U.S. Women’s National Team left Seattle invigorated after sweeping the first three games in the 2022-23 Rivalry Series. It was the first time since 2019 the U.S. has won three consecutive outings against Canada.

Their 4-2 win on Sunday, Nov. 20, was played in front of 14,551 fans at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, a new record for attendance at a national women's hockey game played in the United States, beating the previous record of 13,320 set in Anaheim during the 2019-20 iteration of the Rivalry Series.

Those fans were treated to a goal in the opening minute of play, as Savannah Harmon (Downers Grove, Ill.) scored 40 seconds in. That goal set the tone for the night. 

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U.S. Women's Hockey Team Opens Rivalry Series With A 4-3 Shootout Win Over Canada →

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The U.S. women’s hockey team started off the 2022-23 iteration of its Rivalry Series against Canada with a 4-3 shootout win Tuesday night in Kelowna, British Columbia.

Hilary Knight and Alex Carpenter each scored in both regulation and the shootout, while goalie Nicole Hensley did not allow a goal in the shootout.

Hensley came up huge for the Americans with 32 saves, including a game-saving stop of Marie Philip-Poulin’s penalty shot with 39.2 seconds left in the extra period. She also did not allow a power play goal in seven opportunities for Canada.

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A New Winter Bring A New Rivalry Series For The U.S. And Canada Women’s Hockey Teams →

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The U.S. women’s hockey team is coming off a brutal and unprecedented stretch in which it played three major tournaments in 53 weeks — and won silver in each.

From late August 2021 to the first week in September 2022, the Americans played in two world championships and an Olympic Winter Games, falling to rivals Canada in the final of all three.

With much of the sports world now settling into a post-pandemic normal, the days of playing three global championships in such short succession appear to be in the rearview mirror. For women’s hockey, though, one key uncertainty remains.

The next world championship — the pinnacle of any non-Olympic season — will be held in 2023 in Canada, but specific dates have yet to be announced. Typically, the world championship is held in March or early April.

Without that date fixed on the calendar, teams are left to put together a schedule of games and camps without knowing when they’ll need to be at peak readiness.

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Women’s Division I College Hockey: Shift in emphasis helps Quinnipiac to 9-0 start

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The Quinnipiac Bobcats have won nine straight games to open the season and have moved up to #4 in the national polls – their highest-ever ranking – after a pair of impressive weekend wins over Cornell and Princeton.

The Bobcats looked to be in a great position heading into this season, returning much of the roster that carried them to 2 overtimes against eventual national champion Ohio State in the NCAA quarterfinal last year. Then they added graduate transfer Shay Maloney from Brown, as well as stellar rookie Madison Chantler, who won gold with Canada at the U18 Women’s World Championships last summer. In a crowded and competitive ECAC, they have already set themselves apart. And it’s just the first week of November.

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Women’s Division I College Hockey: Aggressive non-conference scheduling pays off at Penn State →

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Every coach has a different philosophy for how to fill out their non-conference schedule. In larger conferences, there are fewer slots that need to be filled. In a conference like the CHA, with only six teams, there are more. Add in that last season and this one, the CHA is playing with just five teams, and that leaves 20 or so possible non-conference games to schedule.

Penn State coach Jeff Kampersal likened scheduling to a complex jigsaw puzzle. And there are far more things that go into creating a non-conference schedule than picking an opponent. Most programs agree to a home and home series, where the teams play at each participant’s home venue, usually over the course of two seasons. Increasingly, as we see this weekend at St. Lawrence, teams that are traveling a long distance will schedule a round robin, where one team hosts and two teams travel to the site and they all play each other once. There are also various tournaments around the holidays and winter break.

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Women’s Division I College Hockey: Mel Ruzzi is changing expectations and standards at Brown →

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When Mel Ruzzi took over as head coach of the Brown Bears before last season, the team had not finished above 11th in the ECAC since 2012. As mentioned in the ECAC season preview, it has been 13 years since the last time this team managed six conference victories and nine years since they last won six games in a season overall. In addition, Ruzzi is the fifth coach over the course of the last ten seasons Brown has played.

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Women's Sled Hockey Takes Center Stage at Women's World Challenge →

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The inaugural Para Ice Hockey Women's World Challenge resulted in a title for Team USA, but the tournament will be remembered for so much more than the final results. 

“I want to emphasize how much of a huge part of history this is,” said U.S. forward and championship game-winning-goal scorer Katie Ladlie. 

An event more than a decade in the making, the tournament, which took place in Green Bay, Wisconsin, Aug 26-28, was the first ever women’s tournament sanctioned under World Para Ice Hockey. That distinction is an important step in gaining recognition, attention and funding for women’s Para ice hockey. 

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U.S. Women Face Rival Canada For Hockey World Championship Gold →

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A deep rivalry will be renewed when the U.S. and Canada meet Sunday in the gold-medal game of the IIHF Women’s World Championship.

The U.S. has played in the title game of every world championship since the event began in 1990, facing Canada in all but one of those games.

“To me, U.S. versus Canada is the best game you can watch in our sport. And it's the one that everybody is gearing up for,” said Katie Crowley, a three-time Olympian and current Boston College coach who also participated in six world championships from 1997-2005.

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U.S. Women's Hockey Team Takes New Approach For the 2022 World Championship →

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A new coaching staff for the U.S. women’s hockey team has the group playing with a new mentality and a new style at the 2022 IIHF Women’s World Championship currently taking place in Frederikshavn and Herning, Denmark. The Americans hope these changes will also bring a change of fortune.

The past 365 days did not go as the U.S. would have liked. 

This time last year, the Americans fell short of the world championships title for the first time since 2012 when they dropped a 3-2 game in overtime to rival Canada. Prior to 2021, the U.S. had won eight of the previous nine world championship titles, including five straight dating back to 2013.

A few months after those world championships, the U.S. made a run back to the Olympic gold-medal game in Beijing in February. However, this time they fell 3-2 to Canada in regulation.

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A Massive Step For Women’s Sled Hockey is Happening in Green Bay this Weekend →

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Important progress in the growth of women’s sled hockey is taking place this weekend and the U.S. Women's Development Sled Hockey Team is playing host. The inaugural Para Ice Hockey Women's World Challenge is taking place Aug. 26-28 in Green Bay, Wisconsin, at Cornerstone Community Center. 

A goal more than 10 years in the making, U.S. coach Rose Misiewicz said this tournament is an important advance along the path that many competing this weekend hope will lead to women’s sled hockey becoming a part of the Paralympics. 

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Q&A with IIHF President Luc Tardif →

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IIHF President Luc Tardif was made available to press for a short interview during intermission of the bronze medal game at the the U18 IIHF Women's World Championships in Madison on June 13.

Below you'll find a transcript of that conversation as well as the audio Nicole recorded while speaking to Tardif. The other reporter in this interview is Todd Milewski, who covers University of Wisconsin men's and women's hockey in Madison for the local newspaper, The Wisconsin State Journal.

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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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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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