↑ Milestones – Congratulations go out to a ton of folks this week. Let's start with Kahlen Lamarche, who tied a Quinnipiac program for goals in a single season with 30. Sydney Morrow earned her 100th career point with Minnesota's win over St. Cloud State. Abbey Murphy tied Nadine Muzerall for career goals, scoring her 139th on Saturday. We had two defender hat tricks - KK Harvey for Wisconsin and Makayla Watson for Quinnipiac. It was Harvey's first career triple and the first hatty by a blueliner for Wisconsin since 2000. Watson's was the first for a defender in 15 years for Quinnipiac. For coaches, shout out to Molly Engstrom on her 50th win at Maine and Penn State coach Jeff Kampersal, who earned his 500th career win.
↓ Princeton – After rattling off 13 wins in a row, the Tigers were swept this past weekend, losing to Colgate and Cornell. That bumps Quinnipiac into the top spot of ECAC standings and puts Princeton at 8th in the NPI.
↑ Northeastern – A pair of wins over UConn set them as the premiere Huskies in Hockey East, they're in the driver's seat when it comes to a regular season title.
↓ IIHF cancelled the U18 Women's Division 3 World Championship – Eight days before it was scheduled to kick off, the IIHF decided to cancel - not postpone or reschedule - the event set to begin in Bangkok, Thailand on January 29. The initial statement from the IIHF was very short. Since, the Ice Hockey Association of Thailand has released a statement (that I used Google translate on, for transparency) that says the issue was the safety of participants. Obviously we don't have the whole story here and I'm not upset that if safety was in question, a decision was made - but it feels like the IIHF defaults to cancellation over rescheduling on girls and women's tournaments and that part I cannot support.
↑ Kelly Pannek – The Minnesota native and Frost forward spoke after the team's game on Sunday about the atrocities taking place in Minneapolis because of ICE and the federal government. I first saw the video from Heather Rule, so I'm linking to her connected posts on BlueSky with the entirety of Pannek's response. It felt conspicuously clipped when the Frost shared on their own socials and I think it's important for people to see the whole thing.
↓ Minnesota Duluth – It's been a rough stretch for the Bulldogs since the new year - through four series they have one win, four losses and three ties. They're averaging just 1.2 goals scored per game over that stretch. Ève Gascon continues to be one of the best goalies in the country, but she's not getting any offensive support from a team that is frankly too offensively talented to be this stifled. They've now slipped to ninth in the NPI and are in danger of not making the NCAA Tournament.
(Photo: Nicole Haase)
