(Shoutout to Adam Steinbach and Drew Kohrs for providing a new stash of Stick Taps and Snark photos to use - thanks so much!)
↑ Milestones – Yale's Carina DiAntonio scored her 100th career point. Minnesota's Nelli Laitinen scored her 50th goal and teammate Abbey Murphy became the program's all-time leader in game-winning goals with 25. Robert Morris' Maggie Hatch became the third goaltender in program history to make 2,000 saves in her career.
↓ End of an era - The final women's hockey game was played at Matthews Arena last weekend. Northeastern defeated Boston College 4-2 and celebrated their senior day as demolition is scheduled to start immediately on the 115 year old building. NU will play the remainder of its games this season on the road, using Walter Brown Arena at BU and Bentley Arena at Bentley as home ice in the second half.
↑↓ Winter break – On the one hand, booo, no hockey. On the other, the student athletes get to finish school for the semester, rest and recover and everyone gets a reset. The PWHL is on a short international break, but are playing all through January, including the start of the Takeover Tour games, so there will be plenty of women's hockey to watch. We've got Rivalry Series games this week and are just 31 days from the start of the IIHF U18 Women's World Championship, which I'll be covering on site in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.
↓ F%&K Cancer – This is a forever and always thought/snark but I've been feeling it extra hard this week following Czechia national team and Ottawa Charge coach Carla MacLeod's announcement that she has been diagnosed with breast cancer. It was reinforced when Erica Howe was the one to drop the puck at the Toronto/Ottawa game on Saturday. These women are two of the best of us and I'll be damned if we're going to lose the women pushing this sport forward now that there's a much clearer future for everyone in it. Carla is a spectacular coach - one of the few women doing it at her level. She's a role model for her players, fans and younger skaters - and I know I'm not the only journalist who comes away from interactions with her energized, inspired and impressed. She consistently looks for the positives, rejects the negative assumptions of questions and generally leaves me feeling a bit in awe as she moves on to the next person in the mixed zone. We here at Victory Press send all the best to Erica and Carla as they navigate their journeys.
