That, and the advancement of the concept that you should never pick against Patrick Mahomes when the Super Bowl itself comes down to the closing seconds with everything on the line. Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs — for those who might have been in seclusion for the last week — came through with a vital little touchdown pass with 3 seconds left in overtime to beat the San Francisco 49ers 25-22 in a game that droned on as a defensive showdown for three quarters.

Showdowns will become more prevalent in men’s college hockey in the next few weeks in the Big Ten, NCHC, and CCHA. But the future is now for the WCHA’s women, who have only two weekends remaining before league playoffs.

WCHA women’s hockey battles down the stretch
The University of Minnesota is in the thick of two huge rivalries to end the regular season, as they battle to find consistency against the top contenders. Ohio State continues to dominate the standings with a leading 23-1 record, good for the runaway No. 1 rank in the nation as well. Wisconsin is second with a 20-4 record that would be spectacular if the Buckeyes weren’t around. The Golden Gophers are third at 18-5-1.

The spotlight of the weekend, though, finds Minnesota at Wisconsin, with a shot at sneaking past the Badgers with a sweep. If that wasn’t enough drama, the Gophers return home next week and face Minnesota Duluth, which is not in contention but is perhaps Minnesota’s most fierce rival.

UMD has its own mini-drama, because the Bulldogs are battling to move into contention but also to free themselves of the new threat to their status of fourth-best in the league, coming from St. Cloud State. The Huskies lost two tough games to Minnesota last weekend, while UMD swept two games at St. Thomas, which vaulted UMD ahead of the Huskies and into a five-point lead for fourth place and the final home-ice spot in the first round of the WCHA tournament.

This weekend, St. Cloud State goes to Duluth to face the Bulldogs, and the interesting thing about that series at AMSOIL Arena is that one victory by UMD will assure them of the fourth spot and home-ice advantage. But in the first round of playoffs, the fourth-place team plays fifth place, so after this weekend’s series, both teams know they are going to be facing each in the best-of-three first round, with the only question being which will be the home team. On the final weekend next week, UMD goes to Minnesota while St. Cloud State plays at Bemidji State, and the highlight series will be Ohio State at Wisconsin.

The WCHA Women’s tournament is always a season treasure with close, tough, single-elimination games — usually an overtime of two — at Ridder Arena on the Gophers campus in Minneapolis. So, after all the posturing for playoff position, whoever wins between UMD and St. Cloud State gets the honor, undoubtedly, of taking on No. 1 Ohio State in the league semifinal.

Hunt has productive weekend vs. UST 
Last weekend, UMD’s sweep at St. Thomas was pretty much because of the presence of Reece Hunt. She played four years at Bemidji State, and with no sniff of playoff advancement, she jumped into the transfer portal and went to UMD as a graduate student for her fifth year.

How effective was she at St. Thomas last weekend? Well, completed a natural hat trick and scored all four UMD goals by the second intermission in the eventual 4-1 victory. Rylee Bartz scored the UST goal in the second period. 

The next night, Hunt scored to open the second period and break a 1-1 tie, with what stood up as the game-winner in a 5-1 victory. For the weekend, Hunt scored five goals and she also assisted on Olivia Wallin’s third-period goal for a six-point series.

“Reece Hunt is a massive addition to our program, and a great person,” said UMD coach Maura Crowell. “I never care who scores; whoever scores, I’m happy. But Reece always knows where to go and how to finish.”

Hunt was asked which of her four Friday goals was her favorite.

“The first three, because all three of us on our line were involved,” Hunt said.

UMD stands 1-1 against St. Cloud State this season, and the Bulldogs have a perfect 12-0 record against the bottom three teams in the league, but are 1-9 against the top three — Ohio State, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

As compelling as the UMD-St. Cloud State series is, both games will start at 3 p.m. on Friday and Saturday at AMSOIL Arena, because the prime-time night schedule has the UMD men hosting preseason-favorite Denver both nights at AMSOIL.

High school sections, St. Scholastica splits, Rivalry Series
It’s altogether fitting and proper that we watch the girls high school hockey sections get decided this week with some outstanding games, and their ever-increasing skill level makes the games and the sections more competitive than ever. The same holds true for Division III college hockey, where St. Scholastica split two captivating games against St. Mary’s last weekend. Despite the heavy emphasis on Division I college hockey, the caliber of Division III has risen amazingly, both in skill and tempo.

The Saints split two games with St. Mary’s, losing 2-1 in overtime Friday after the Saints saw a 1-0 lead disappear with 1:19 remaining. But then the Saints came back against the favored Cardinals on Saturday night at Mars-Lakeview Arena. It was a tough game, and thankfully the Saints had sophomore Makenzie Cole, from Grand Rapids-Greenway, in the nets. She stopped 60 shots in the first game, and was just as spectacular in blunting the St. Mary’s attack on Saturday afternoon. The Saints won a highly emotional shootout victory.

After the series, which drew a hearty and loud crowd, Saints coach Julianne Vasichek, who is originally from Montana, made a quick trip to St. Paul to watch former teammates play on both sides in the seventh and deciding game of the Rivalry Tour, won 6-1 by Canada over Team USA at Xcel Energy Center. The United States won the first three games in the series, but Canada stormed back to win the next three, including the game seven blowout.

It was a deserving celebration for Vasichek. It was her birthday, as well as nine years since she survived a liver transplant at the Mayo Clinic. Last week, she was announced as a member of UMD’s all-time 25-year all-star team. Vasichek was a two-time NCAA champion and All-America for the Bulldogs and remains in contact with former UMD coach Shannon Miller, who now lives in Palm Springs, Calif.

Not a bad way to celebrate National Girls and Women in Sports week.

UMD men’s coach looking for urgency vs. Denver
Denver is not exactly dominating NCHC after a strong start. The Pioneers have slipped to fifth behind North Dakota, St. Cloud State, Western Michigan and Colorado College in the tightly bunched NCHC.

“Denver has strong lines, and they play with continuity and don’t give up the puck,” said UMD coach Scott Sandelin. “We have to take care of the puck because they’re a good transition team, and a strong defensive team. They don’t turn pucks over, and if you’ve got the puck, they get on you and can frustrate you.

“Just like every team in our league. We’ve got eight games left, and we need some guys to play better. I’ve been waiting for that for quite a while now. We need overachievers, not underachievers, and any contributions we get from anybody means a lot.

“If you don’t have urgency now, you’ll never have it.”

In the Super Bowl, Mahomes won the MVP award, for the back-to-back Super Bowl wins. But despite the assembled gang of television analysts that insisted on spewing endless superlatives as if they were unique in their opinions, they all agreed that a victory would mean the Chiefs were a dynasty. But let’s get one thing straight: This modern-day NFL doesn’t have room for dynasties. Parity dominates, and on any given Sunday, any team can beat any other, and even the Vikings could take down the 49ers in the right circumstance.

But while I thought the Detroit Lions lost to the 49ers in a day of botched officials calls, and Baltimore, Buffalo and Dallas were all extremely strong, we can declare that the Chiefs and the 49ers were the best two survivors, and when the big trophy was on the line, Mahomes proved again that he is the best survivor of them all. Very Brett Favre-like.

The post Hockey outlasts Super Bowl Weekend appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

But the women’s representatives from Minnesota deserve to be recognized for their prominence, too. A look at the week before Christmas national rankings show that five of the top eight teams are from the WCHA, starting at the top:

1. Ohio State, 14-2
2. Minnesota, 13-2
3. Wisconsin 13-3
6. UMD, 10-5-1
8. St. Cloud State, 12-5

The 1-2-3 punch at the top had to survive the sort of upsets that never used to happen in the WCHA.

St. Cloud State, clearly the surprise of women’s college hockey this season, invaded Columbus and, after falling behind 1-0 in the first period, scored twice in the second period. Finnish import goaltender Sanni Ahola stifled the Buckeyes the rest of the way for a shocking 2-1 upset. Ohio Sate had lost only one game all season, and while everyone anticipated a tough game, nobody expected a Huskies win.

St. Cloud’s Addi Scribner said that after that upset, an Ohio State fan came up to her and said: “Your goalie is unreal. She’s a Cyborg!”

The Buckeyes came back in the second game and broke a 1-1 tie with four straight goals in the second period to gain a 6-2 victory and a split. While being upset by St. Cloud could have cost Ohio State the No. 1 ranking, it didn’t. That’s because No. 2 Wisconsin suffered a similar weekend, against Duluth.

UMD went to Wisconsin and lost 3-0, solidifying the Badgers position on Saturday. However, the Bulldogs battled the Badgers through two scoreless periods in their Sunday afternoon rematch, and were determined to make their effort stand up in the third. UMD won that second game 3-2 for the split. 

A victory by the Badgers would have elevated them back to the No. 1 ranking.

The upsets weren’t over when the weekend ended, though, because the Gophers had a one-game matchup Tuesday against St. Cloud State. Peyton Hemp gave the Gophers a 1-0 lead but Scribner tied the game in the second period. The game went to overtime and a shootout. Allie Franco’s shootout goal gave the Gophers, who came in on an eight-game winning streak, the extra WCHA point. 

But it seems there are no such things as upsets anymore in the WCHA. At least going into a frantic pre-holiday-break weekend that features Wisconsin at Minnesota, and UMD at St. Cloud State, with Bemidji State at St. Thomas for good measure among Minnesota’s teams.

Minnesota teams have always dominated with NCAA championships
For statistical evidence, it’s not as though the Minnesota teams and the West are just emerging on top. Go back to the year 2000-01, which was the first year the NCAA conducted a national tournament for women’s teams. In the first 13 years it was held, Minnesota Duluth and Minnesota virtually owned the championship.

UMD won the first three NCAA titles, with spectacular players such as Jenny Schmidgall, Maria Rooth and Caroline Ouellette leading the way. Under Shannon Miller’s coaching, UMD won five championships in all, with the 2001, 2002, 2003, 2008 and 2010 trophies still filling the school’s trophy case. Minnesota won championships in 2004, 2005, 2012 and 2013 — meaning that the Bulldogs and Gophers won nine of the first 13 NCAA women’s championships.

The other four titles were won by the emerging power at Wisconsin, meaning that those three WCHA teams won all of the first 13 women’s national championships. The Badgers won in 2006, 2007, 2009 and 2011, and their 2007 team went 36-1-4 to eclipse the 31-3-2 of UMD in 2003 and the 36-2-2 by the Gophers in 2005.

But in 2013, the Golden Gophers had a load of talent throughout their lineup and set the record for all time with a splendid 41-0-0 championship season.

It was the following year, in 2013-14, that Clarkson broke through and claimed the first NCAA title for women for the East, and Clarkson also won championships in 2017 and 2018. And that’s it. Only three times did a non-WCHA team win the title, and all three times it was Clarkson.

All NCAA tournaments took a year off during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. When they resumed, Mark Johnson led his Badgers back for their sixth championship, with Ohio State emerging to capture the 2022 title. Last spring, Wisconsin was a surprise winner of its seventh title, and the same WCHA teams seem clustered for another run this season.

St. Cloud State women marking their mark
But maybe there will be an additional team in the mix, after St. Cloud State pulled off the seemingly impossible task of upsetting Ohio State on the road and coming home to tie the Gophers. That takes care of the top two-ranked teams, and now they get to take on old rival UMD, which upset No. 3 Wisconsin.

The games at St. Cloud State’s Herb Brooks National Hockey Center are expected to be tight, low-scoring battles, because both teams have two outstanding goaltenders. UMD has record-setting Hailey MacLeod, who is setting records for goals-against and save percentage, alongside freshman Eve Gascon, from Montreal.

St. Cloud State has an interesting duo, with Ahola capturing the spotlight in net. She’s paired with Jojo Chobak, who spent a season at UMD before transferring to St. Cloud State because she had grown weary of backing up Swedish Olympic star Emma Soderberg, who decided to stay another year.

Both teams depend on depth, getting scoring from their three top lines, and four for St. Cloud State. Both play tough defensive hockey but with defensemen who can readily move up into the play to help the rush or fire lasers from the points.

“We hung our hats on being a tough defensive team last year,” said St. Cloud State coach Brian Idalski. “We haven’t changed that and still want to play tough defense, but we’ve added some new players and I think we’re capable of scoring more goals this year.

“Especially coming off two tough games at Ohio State, then tying the Gophers on Tuesday. We’re getting contributions from all four lines, and we’re approaching this weekend like we’re preparing for the playoffs.”

From Duluth’s end of the transition from last weekend’s upset to this weekend’s rivalry series, the sound was similar. Center Mannon McMahon praised third-line center Jenna Lawry, who was cool and poised as she scored the game-winner at Madison.

“It was super cool to see how Jenna and her line have stepped up, and now they’re being rewarded,” McMahon said. “A lot of us were disappointed at losing 3-0 in Saturday’s game, but we were confident enough to not let that happen again on Sunday.

“Our response from the first game to the second was what I was most proud of. Now we have to carry that through to St. Cloud. It’s going to be tough. They just don’t quit, and they love to battle.”

The post Women Take Command appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Last season, the Gophers defeated UMD all five times they played, four in the regular season and once in the playoffs. Doubtful that even that landslide completely made up for the sting Minnesota felt when its previous season ended on home ice in a 2-1 loss to the Bulldogs in the 2022 NCAA West Region final.

That’s the sort of thing that is hanging in the balance whenever these two teams meet.

“It’s always a good game,” said UMD defenseman Nina Jobst-Smith. “A lot of players on both teams played against or with each other growing up. That helps raise the level of intensity to some extra animosity. That always makes it more fun. They’re quick, and very offensive from their forwards back to their defense, and they’ve got good goaltending.”

But none of the players, or coaches, involved with the two programs can recall the intensity that was born when the UMD program was born 25 years ago. Minnesota had already been playing for a couple of years, with only Division III Augsburg as an area competitor. When UMD started its hockey program, it was also the first year that enough other Western teams started that the Western Collegiate Hockey Association also started. Both the WCHA and the Bulldogs are celebrating their 25th anniversary this season.

The first time coach Shannon Miller took her Bulldogs team to face the Gophers, UMD won the Dec. 3, 1999 game 5-4. That led to a very interesting bit of intrigue between the two. Minnesota coach Laura Halldorson used her influence to get the first-year WCHA champion invited to participate in a coaches association four-team, postseason invitational tournament in spring of 2000 at Northeastern.

Several times during that season, I asked Halldorson: Since UMD was surprisingly strong, wouldn’t it be great for the WCHA if the top two teams could go to that tournament to make it two East against two West teams? Halldorson was less than tactful when she said, “No. There will be only one West team and it will be us.”

As fate would have it, UMD went on what still stands as a school record 22-game unbeaten streak that first season, and knocked off the Gophers to win the WCHA title, earning the slot in the invitational tournament. That caused Halldorson to pull in all her chips and get the Gophers invited, too, so it ended up being two East and two West teams.

I told Miller that it would be good for the WCHA to have two representatives, but Miller disagreed.

“She insisted all year that there would be only one West team in that tournament, so now she should have to live by what she said,” Miller said at the time.

After I wrote Miller’s comments, Halldorson decided not to speak to me during or after that tournament. 

Tournament organizers put UMD and Minnesota against each other in the semifinals of the tournament. Minnesota won that game on the way to winning the invitational tournament championship.

One year later, in the 2000-01 season, the NCAA decided to start holding an NCAA championship for Division I women’s hockey teams, structuring a full regional playoff to determine the four entries. UMD, in its second season, won that first national championship with a powerful team led by goaltender Tuula Puputti, plus Jenny Schmidgall and Maria Rooth — the two top goal scorers in UMD history — plus Hanna Sikio, Erika Holst, and defensemen Navada Russell, Brittny Ralph, and Pamela Pachal.

UMD also won the second and third NCAA tournament championships. The Bulldogs were national champions in the first three national tournaments ever held, starting in their second year of operation.

Of course, that didn’t sit well with anyone connected with the Gophers, who worked feverishly to find a way to get an NCAA title of their own. They finally managed, and reached an elite level of play they have never wavered from. But while they were getting there, Miller led the Bulldogs to two more NCAA championships.

So, in what amounted to the dark of night, the Gophers unceremoniously started referring to that first and only invitational tournament title as a “national championship,” which closed the gap on their reviled “Duluth Branch.”

In later years, Gopher teams caught up and slipped ahead of UMD. Thanks to a team with U.S. Hockey Hall of Famers Krissy Wendell and Natalie Darwitz, the Gophers even went undefeated through a whole season, culminating with an NCAA title. But while nobody else seemed to notice, except me, there is one banner hanging in Ridder Arena amid the six legitimate NCAA National Championship banners, which proclaims 2000 as a “national championship” year.

That would give Minnesota seven national championships, to UMD’s five. But it also means that if you count up all the NCAA national tournaments, there would be one more “championship” than there have been NCAA national tournaments. Current Gopher women’s coach Brad Frost defends the sleight-of-hand, insisting in retrospect that the 2000 invitational tournament at Northeastern was, indeed, a national tournament.

Not true, Brad.

“I never knew that background,” said current UMD coach Maura Crowell. “They can’t just do that, can they?”

That’s just another reason why this weekend’s series between the U of M Gophers and the UMD Bulldogs has that little extra edge, which players on either team might be unable to explain.

In the WCHA, both Minnesota and UMD are rebuilding a bit, while Wisconsin and Ohio State have run off side-by-side to stand tied for first place. This weekend, while Minnesota (5-2) is at UMD (6-2), Wisconsin (8-0) is facing Ohio State (8-0) for the early lead.

In the ranking, Wisconsin is No. 1 in the women’s poll after being unrated to start the season.

Men’s hockey upate
The St. Cloud State men’s team, which struggled a little against a deceivingly tough early schedule, got everything back in order just at the right time to start the NCHC regular season, and reeled off sweeps of 3-2, 6-0 against Miami and 3-2, 3-0 against Western Michigan. SCSU coach Brett Larson said he thought those two teams would be tough later in the season and has warned his troops to not be complacent this weekend when Minnesota Duluth — his alma mater — comes to town for a series.

“We get Duluth when they’re sure to be in a bad mood, having lost twice to North Dakota,” said Larson, who coached at UMD in two terms, helping them win three NCAA men’s titles. “I think the league is going to be tough as ever, and it will be no surprise if any of the eight teams beats any of the others. There are no upsets in the NCHC. You’ve got to be ready every game.”

St. Thomas just made its presence felt in the CCHA, hitting the road to Bowling Green and sweeping. First, the Tommies won 4-1 behind two goals from Liam Malmquist in the first period. Then they followed that up with a 4-3 with two goals in the third period after Cooper Gay scored twice early for the Tommies.

The post Women’s Hockey Rivalry: Gophers vs. Bulldogs appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

UMD’s Kayla Black stops 23 shots for her 7th shutout of the season

DULUTH – The St. Cloud State Huskies came into Duluth hoping on Hockey Day in Minnesota hoping to get themselves back in good standings after losing 12 of their last 13 games while the Bulldogs hoped to thwart that effort.

That being said, the Bulldogs came into the weekend as a statistical favorite, but with some concerns of their own after splitting last weekend’s series with Bemidji State, the very same team St. Cloud State defeated the week before.

“You have to be prepared to work,” said Bulldogs coach Shannon Miller. “In our first period, we just played, we didn’t compete and when you do that you get yourself into trouble.”

UMD opened the first period with a goal from left wing Katherine McGovern just under two minutes after puck drop, her first of the season. From there things stayed fairly even offensively, with each team recording only five shots in the first period despite UMD attempting 15, seven of which St. Cloud State blocked in the first frame.

“Every team in our conference is good, so you need to expect a lot of pressure,” said Bulldog center Lara Stalder. “They’re a hard working team so we knew the way they were going to be coming out. We didn’t figure it out in the first period. We need to find that killer instinct in us.”

The second period was scoreless but both teams picked up their offensive efforts, more than doubling their respective shot totals to end the period UMD-18, St. Cloud-13.

The Bulldogs’ Katerina Mrazova was awarded a penalty shot in the early third period, but waited too long to take a shot as she came in on Huskies’ Julie Friend who would make the save to keep her team within one.

However, Friend wasn’t able to stop the shot of a wide open Lara Stalder who doubled the UMD’s lead with 11:49 left to go in the match up. Stalder sent a one timer over Friend’s right shoulder from the edge of the crease after defenseman Brigette Lacquette weaved through traffic from the blue line to send the puck down.

The Huskies answered back with offensive pressure of their own as St. Cloud State coach Eric Rud pulled Friend with nearly four minutes remaining in the game. While the Huskies were able to get more pressure on the Bulldogs, they were unable to crack UMD’s Kayla Black, who made 23 saves on the outing, earning her seventh shutout this season.

“She came up big for us again,” Stalder said of her goaltender. “We need that trust in our goaltender and we have it right now so that’s great.”

The women will face off again on Sunday at 3:07 p.m. at AMSOIL Arena in Duluth, Minnesota for the second half of their weekend series.

The post Bulldog women blank Huskies 2-0 appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Is the NHL capable of replicating Becky Hammon’s barrier-breaking hire?

Becky Hammon coaching a San Antonio practice in Berlin where the Spurs participated in the NBA Global Games. (Photo – NBA.com/Spurs)

August 5, 2014 was a historic day. For the first time in the “big four” of professional sports, a woman was hired as a full-time assistant coach when Gregg Popovich, head coach of the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs, added Becky Hammon to his staff.

At the time Hammon was in her final playing days for San Antonio’s WNBA team, the Stars, after a 13-year playing career. Facing retirement, Hammon was given the opportunity to stay within her beloved sport and turn her focus to coaching some of the world’s most elite basketball players.

As the only woman in the male-dominated field, Hammon will certainly garner a lot of attention, but the move also sets a precedent: Will other teams and sports ever consider matching the Spurs’ progressive hire?

The answer is complicated, especially in the hockey world. The first step involves a not-so-simple attitude change.

“It’s a natural assumption that if a man is asked about hockey, he knows what he’s talking about,” University of Minnesota-Duluth Head Coach Shannon Miller said. “Whether it’s him skating out onto the ice and commanding respect at practice, it’s like he’s instantly given that respect because he’s a man, and same thing in an interview process.

“We just assume because he played hockey and he’s a guy that he must know more than a woman. That’s a very, very common mistake; I’ve been watching it go on for years.”

Overcoming Perceptions

While the fundamentals of the game between men and women are the same, there are differences in the men’s game that do come into play.

As one current National Hockey League assistant coach who spoke on the condition of anonymity noted, many NHL coaches are former players. They’ve played through the grind of a pro season and know firsthand what it takes to put their best effort out on the ice every single night.

“They’ve been through the war, so to speak, and know how physical it is,” said the former player and lone NHL source we contacted willing to discuss the topic. “I think that would be the hardest adjustment with a woman being a coach.

“The battle is a little bit different when you have hard checking and guys getting cut and there’s fighting involved, I think that just would be a hard adjustment for a lot of people.”

This is not to say women don’t get it — because women’s hockey is growing to new heights — but the NHL, like any professional league, is a different sort of monster. As a result, any chance of bringing a woman onto a staff would most likely be best pursued as a gradual process. The NHL coach we spoke to recognized that it may be best if it’s a move that starts in high school, to see how it works and move from there.

“If a woman were to be a coach, I think the players, in my opinion, initially would have a hard time grasping it but I think over time and if you prove yourself, I think the players would get used to it,” he said. “On the other hand, people might find it hard to adjust.”

Natalie Darwitz served as an assistant coach for Minnesota in 2008-09 and 2010-11, while taking the 2009-10 season to compete in her third-straight Olympics in 2010. (Photo / University of Minnesota Athletics)

Change, though a constant in life, is something that is always hard to deal with no matter its size. As the NHL assistant pointed out, there are people who are still traditionalists — people who believe hockey is truly a man’s game. These people exist in all levels of hockey, including its fan base.

This sexist attitude partly stems from the physical differences between men and women. As Natalie Darwitz — a standout at the University of Minnesota and U.S. National Team member in the 2002, 2006 and 2010 Olympics — recalled, at a certain point in her storied playing career the guys got bigger and stronger and there was nothing she could do about it.

“That might be a stigma for any female going into the NHL world. Why should a player listen to a female when he can shoot harder and skate harder just because he physically can and she can’t,” said Darwitz, currently the head coach of the Lakeville South Girl’s hockey team after spending two seasons as an assistant for the Gophers. “There’s just a secret ingredient in men called testosterone that women don’t have.”

Further Considerations

As Miller points out, rather than looking at a female coach as, well, a woman, she hopes she would be seen as a human being who is competent at her job and is deserving of the respect that comes with the title.

“I think men are given the nod and the automatic ‘oh he must know what he’s talking about,’ and sometimes that’s by women too,” Miller said. “As women, we have to prove ourselves over and over and over and quite frankly it never seems to be enough.”

Harvard coach Katey Stone led Team USA to silver in Sochi, Russia earlier this year as the first female to coach the U.S. women in the Olympics. (Photo -Tom Szczerbowski/USA TODAY Sports

In fact, female head coaches are in the minority in their own sport. Harvard head coach Katey Stone was the first woman to coach the USA’s women’s team in the Olympics as the leader in Sochi. She and Miller are also two of six female bench bosses out of the 35 teams in Division I college hockey. Furthermore, Stone and Miller oversee two of just three programs with an all-female coaching staff. Notably, of those 35 programs, three have no female on staff, while the other 32 have at least one female assistant.

Both Stone and Miller expressed their extreme disappointment upon hearing those numbers and believe there are plenty of women out there capable of coaching.

“There are a lot of women out there that can coach if given the opportunity,” Miller said. “Athletic Directors continue to hire men to coach on the women’s side and I think it’s a grave mistake. I’m disappointed and I hope that one day the pendulum will swing back, sooner rather than later.”

Stone did acknowledge that there is no way those statistics can be changed quickly in one sweeping motion, while Darwitz explained that in being a coach, there are plenty of lifestyle considerations, such as having a family. Regardless, in Darwitz’s own words, the statistic remains pretty staggering.

But the women in those positions are content to stay there to a degree. Miller noted that, as a coach in what she believes is currently the best league in the world for women hockey players, she is coaching at the highest level on a day-to-day basis. Stone also acknowledged that many women are happy to stay within women’s hockey.

“It’s a little bit of a double edged sword: you need the backing of those (NHL) organizations, but you also need the willingness of women willing to put themselves in that arena,” Stone said. “Some women are very, very content in an extremely positive way, coaching women. They love it. They feel like they’re giving back a tremendous amount.”

That being said, Darwitz, Stone and Miller all believe there are competent women willing and deserving to make that historic move into the NHL.

Hoping For Change

Shannon Miller is beginning her 16th season behind the Bulldogs’ bench after leading Team Canada to a silver medal in the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Japan. (Photo / WCHA.com)

While Miller is outspoken on the subject, she did raise the point that simply asking when a female coach will break into the NHL suggests that men’s hockey is superior to women’s hockey; that the game played by one gender is more important than that same game played by the other gender. Even with that in mind, she believes it’s past time women were given more opportunities to lead, both within women’s hockey and men’s hockey.

“If men can cross over and coach in the women’s game, why can’t women cross over and coach in the men’s game,” Miller said. “I know that you have to be a high-level coach and have proven yourself and worked your way up and proven to be successful through the grind, but there are women who have done that and there’s no question in my mind that there are women that can coach at the NHL level.”

Though some are ready for such a change, it is something that will take some time; it most likely won’t happen in the near future and it could never happen. When and if it does happen, it will undoubtedly be a significant day in hockey history.

“Any time something’s new or it’s the first time, it makes a big splash; when it’s not new anymore, it has a very small ripple effect,” Stone said. “It’s about competency and respect. If the people that you’re working with respect your judgment, your knowledge, how you go about your work, then it’s not difficult to gain their trust.”

The post Spurring Debate appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.