(Shoutout to Adam Steinbach and Drew Kohrs for providing a new stash of Stick Taps and Snark photos to use - thanks so much!)
↑ Milestones – Congratulations to Providence's Reichen Kirchmair, Clarkson's Sena Catterall and Wisconsin's Cassie Hall for reaching 100 career points. Congrats to Wisconsin's Lacey Eden who became the 4th Badger ever to tally 100 career goals, joining Hilary Knight, Brianna Decker and Meghan Duggan.
↓ Clarkson – After an inconsistent, up and down season, the Golden Knights' season ended with a whimper as they were upset by Union in the first round of the ECAC Tournament.
↑ Having women's hockey to watch after the Olympics – Women's hockey has been waiting for it's moment and while I've thought this before, we might actually be there now. The US gold medal, the backlash to the men and the players returning to in-progress leagues should all converge to make this a really great time for women's hockey.
↓ Crazy conference tournament formats – Consider this my low level hot take until things change. Every conference does something different to the point that they don't even end their regular season on the same week. They switch between best of three and single elimination in the course of one tournament. It's a mess and confusing and I hate it.
↑ Teams thriving without their Olympians – This is a general shoutout to all the players that stepped into bigger roles and shined during the last few weeks. Some teams were in a tough spot with players in Milan, but on each of those squads, players took more time on ice, stepped into leadership roles and helped their team be better. No one knew what things would look like this Olympic cycle and while I'm sure plenty of coaches would prefer not to have to play the final month of the regular season without their stars, ultimately I don't think the game suffered for it.
↓ Minnesota – A pair of overtime losses to Minnesota Duluth has dropped the Gophers to 4th in the NPI, .645 behind Penn State. That puts them on a tougher path to the title game with little to no recourse to correct it.
↑ Collegiate Olympians – Everyone is in elimination style tournaments right now so nothing is guaranteed, but if the top four WCHA teams advance to the Final Faceoff in St. Paul in two weekends, there will be 6 gold medalists on the ice as well as an additional 9 Olympians from Sweden, Czechia and Finland. An all-session GA adult ticket is $40 for three games. Silver medalists Alessia Baechler and Naemi Herzig play in Hockey East, as do Olympians Luisa and Lilli Welcke from Germany and Julia Mesplède from France. The ECAC has Czechia goalie Michaela Hesová , France's Jade Barbirati, Germany's Nina Christof. In the AHA, USA's Tessa Janecke, Sweden's Nicole Hall and Italy's Matilde Fantin are all on Penn State, Mercyhurst's Julia Schalin and Lindenwood's Lucie Quarto and Elina Zilliox were all at the Olympics. There are so many ways to keep watching these players.
↓ Difficulty of watching games – With all the women's hockey hype, I wish I didn't have to tell people to spend a bunch of money to watch NCAA streams. If someone in league PR is reading, consider what it would take to have your streams available for free the next two weeks. There's so much potential audience out there but they have to know where you are. Make it easy for them right now and they're way more likely to want to come back next season.
