The good and the bad from the past weekend in women's DI college hockey.
↑ Record-setting weekend – On Friday, Wisconsin tied a nine-year-old record, tallying eight goals in a period. By Saturday evening, a whole new standard had been set after Clarkson reeled off 10 goals in the third period of their game against St. Michael's. Congratulations to Baylee Kirwan, Nicole Gosling, Anne Cherkowski, Caroline Goffredo, Haley Winn, Sidney Fess and Jenna Smellie on making history.
↓ Technical difficulties on the Minnesota/Connecticut feed – The series I was most excited to watch this season was scheduled for ESPN+, but midway through the first game, the feed died and it wasn't back for game two. With all the costs to watch women's college hockey, it's really frustrating to not have access. It turns out that if you looked closely at the UConn and Minnesota game day tweets, they mentioned something called UConn+ and the stream was apparently available on their website. I did go to both team's feeds looking for information, but missed that detail in those tweets. I wish Connecticut, as the host, had shared that information more explicitly, particularly because free streams are rare and this was a top ten matchup.
↑ Minnesota coach Brad Frost reaches 500 wins – The Gophers' 4-1 win over Connecticut on Friday made Brad Frost just the sixth head coach in Division I women's hockey history to reach the mark of 500 wins. He has a ridiculous record of 500-109-41 for a .801 winning percentage.
↓ Whistles – I don't actually know if there were more penalties than normal, but watching a number of games over the weekend, it was difficult not to feel like there was little flow to many of them. There's always an adjustment period for both officials and players as a new season kicks off. A total of 191 penalties have been assessed over the first two weekends and I'll be keeping an eye on familiar trends in which league's refs seem to call games more tightly and which league's teams are rarely among the most penalized.
↑ Rookies scoring goals – Ohio State's Jordyn Petrie leads all goal-scorers with 4, but freshmen lit the lamp all over the place over the first two weekends. Congrats to Petrie, Josie St. Martin, Ireland Stein, Jenna Smellie, Caitlin Kraemer, Alexia Côté, Maggie Scannell, Chloe Primerano, Bryn Prier, Hannah Halverson, Raedyn Spademan, Makayla Watson, Emma Goding, Karianne Engelbert and Éloïse Caron (and apologies if I inadvertently missed anyone).
↓ Defense – Of the 26 teams that have played at least one game, just four remain unscored upon - RIT, Quinnipiac, St. Lawrence and Clarkson.
(Photo: Berend Stettler, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
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