Puck drop is tonight! There are thirty games per team now through April 25.
With the expansion to 8 teams, I think the arguments about the expansion process favoring the two new teams (Seattle and Vancouver) have been a little overblown. Because they wanted to snag some stars like Carpenter, Knight, Nurse, et al., those teams then needed to keep their sights a little more limited in draft and free agency, because of the salary cap. We will see, though - perhaps they will dominate!
The league has existing women's hockey experience behind the new teams, including with Cara Gardner Morey going from Princeton coach to Vancouver GM and Brian Idalski going from St. Cloud State coach to Vancouver coach, for example; but the Seattle coach and new Boston coach have not coached women's hockey before. Courtney Kessel, past Boston coach, is back to the college coaching ranks as head coach at Princeton (and her Tigers just beat Quinnipiac in OT last night).
With the expansion to 8 teams, I think the arguments about the expansion process favoring the two new teams (Seattle and Vancouver) have been a little overblown. Because they wanted to snag some stars like Carpenter, Knight, Nurse, et al., those teams then needed to keep their sights a little more limited in draft and free agency, because of the salary cap. We will see, though - perhaps they will dominate!
The league has existing women's hockey experience behind the new teams, including with Cara Gardner Morey going from Princeton coach to Vancouver GM and Brian Idalski going from St. Cloud State coach to Vancouver coach, for example; but the Seattle coach and new Boston coach have not coached women's hockey before. Courtney Kessel, past Boston coach, is back to the college coaching ranks as head coach at Princeton (and her Tigers just beat Quinnipiac in OT last night).