(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 Ohio State's Emma Peschel, who earned her 100th career point on Saturday.
↓ Season's over – There are just 18 teams left playing, meaning the season is over for 27 others. This weekend Boston College, Boston University, Brown, Colgate, Harvard, Lindenwood, LIU, Maine, Minnesota Duluth, New Hampshire, Post, Sacred Heart, St. Michael's, St. Thomas, Bemidji State, St. Cloud State, Syracuse and Union all had their seasons cut short.
↑ Abbey Murphy – She gets her own shoutout this week for scoring her 140th career goals setting a new program record at Minnesota. Murphy had been tied with current Ohio State coach and Gopher alumna Nadine Muzerall at 139 goals since before the Olympics, but took sole possession of the achievement this weekend against St. Cloud State. She currently has 141 goals in 169 games played.
↓ 23 games left in the season – There are eight conference semifinal games, five conference championship games and 10 games in the NCAA Tournament left on the schedule and that is it.
↑ Kahlen Lamarche – She also gets her own post after scoring seven goals in Quinnipiac's weekend series with Brown. She set a new program record for points in a season, with 60. It's been an unreal season for Lamarche, who had just 25 goals combined in her two seasons prior to this. It's all the more impressive because every opponents knows how dominant she has been and they still aren't able to stop her. The second-highest goal-scorer on the Bobcats has 15 goals. The third-highest has five goal. Lamarche has 43.
↓ Minnesota Duluth – The Bulldogs didn't advance to the WCHA Final Faceoff for the first time since 2018. Projections say they have a 19% chance of making the NCAA Tournament. UMD needs the conference semifinals and finals to go straight seeds, with no upsets, if they are going to earn an at-large bid. Otherwise, via their NPI, they'll be bumped out and their bubble will burst.
↑ Minnesota State – The Mavericks played smart, controlled, patient hockey this weekend and earned their second-ever trip to the WCHA semifinals (the 1st was in 2009). Hailey Hansen was absolutely stellar in net for the Mavericks, which obviously helped their cause, but I was impressed with the forecheck by MSU and how they waited for the game to come to them. They trusted their approach and executed their plan and came out with two wins over UMD. In three games, Hansen made 141 saves on 145 Bulldog shots.
↓ My confidence that I have any idea how the next few weeks will play out – After a chaotic conference quarterfinals, I am feeling less prepared than ever to make educated guesses about the outcome of the remaining games. I keep saying I think it will be fun - and it's true, the chaos is entertaining and keeps things interesting - but it does make being on this side of things a little more frustrating as I feel like after months of watching these teams, I'm not closer to accurately predicting how they'll perform than I was back in September.
