QuasiCosmos
Member
Cheer on Clarkson and St Lawrence tonight. Go ECAC!
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ECAC '24-25: Who rebuilds? Who reloads?
- Thread starter BowWowWow
- Start date
Agreed!
Schedule for games:
Penn State v St. Lawrence (at OSU) 7pm Eastern
UMD v Sacred Heart (at Cornell) 7pm
Clarkson v BU (at Wisconsin) 7pm Central
Saturday -
#1 Wisconsin regional 2pm Central
Minnesota v Colgate 2pm Central
#3 Cornell regional 4pm (Eastern)
#2 OSU regional 6pm (Eastern)
QuasiCosmos
Member
It'll be four quarterfinal games of WCHA vs ECAC. League 4's vs 1's, and 2's vs 3's. Let's hope for more good hockey.
Earl_Leatherland
Lucky
ECAC team in every quarterfinal! I like it! LET'S GO TECH!!
creaseprotector100
New member
St. Lawrence took it to Penn State. Given Penn State's season record, I guess the takeaway is that the AHA conference is really weak.
Cornell loses to OSU 4-2 in the semifinals, ending their season 25-5-5 and placed 4th in Pairwise behind Minnesota.
To speak to the title of this thread, Cornell ended up rebuilding, rather than "reloading," but their results were better than any ECAC team that may have reloaded. Coach Doug Derraugh recently in Frozen Four media days described their process since 2020, with their missed #1-seed tournament appearance, as "rebuilding," in any case. This year they didn't have any one standout scorer, as with Izzy Daniel last season, but got even farther than last season and scored by committee. National goalie-of-the-year top-3 finalist Annelies Bergmann had an even better sophomore campaign than her first-year campaign. Lindzi Avar was ECAC rookie of the year and has played with US U18s. In other national-team connections, Derraugh has worked for Hockey Canada coaching on the side but apparently not of late.
(Other teams are also listed below in standings order.)
Colgate "reloaded" to some extent, with some transfers and a new coach (previously assistant coach, Stefan Decosse) who seems to be effective. They will graduate graduate student Kristýna Kaltounková, who played a physical game with a number of penalty minutes but also goals and a firing-up effect for her team. She has made her way back onto the Czech national team after an absence from there and is the first Czech national in the top-10 Patty Kazmaier selection. Colgate has also been bringing in star players, including from US and Canadian national U18 teams, in the last couple years and can be said to be reloading in that sense too. Sophomores who were strong this year (and last year) include Emma Pais, Kaia Malachino, Madeline Palumbo, and Avery Pickering. Junior Elyssa Biederman will be a senior in the fall. They lost to Minnesota in the 4-vs-5 national tourney game.
St. Lawrence continues its rise after a bunch of years in the middle of the pack. Abby Hustler had another great year after her breakout season last year. Many of their top forwards, including Hustler, Anna Segedi, Sarah Marchand, and Aly McLeod, look like they may be graduating. Emma-Sofie Nordström in net (a junior this year) has been one key to their success and one of the best-performing goaltenders in the league throughout the season. She is from Herning, Denmark -- a nation that usually flies under the radar in terms of its women's college hockey students (only a few players I think). One of the distinctive things about coach Chris Wells' style is his willingness to do an aggressive goalie pull with a few minutes left, which has resulted in at least one 3-goal comeback in recent years. This year, toward the end of the season, the strategy also led to Cornell going up 6-0 on an empty-netter (after being up 5-0)! Wellsy, as the SLU stream announcers call him, seems to have a good rapport with the players judging by their play, and so on, and the team has been fairly disciplined with relatively few penalties. They made it to the national quarterfinals and were eliminated by OSU. They slightly upset Penn State in the 1st round.
Clarkson rallied after a mid-season slump and were eliminated by Wisconsin only in the national quarterfinals (after defeating BU in the 1st round). You could say that they reloaded, with some transfers and solid recruiting classes I think, but really much like Cornell this team continues to build or maintain its strengths, playing a defensive game and protecting leads well. (They weren't able to keep their 1-goal lead on Wisconsin, but the players expressed their satisfaction with having stuck to their game plan, in the postgame press.) US national-team player and Patty Kazmaier top-10 finalist Haley Winn was a top scorer from the blue line, and Nicole Gosling has a similar style. Like Kaltounková of Colgate, these two will probably enter the PWHL draft and be picked high. Matt Desrosiers is one of the longest-serving coaches in the league and has a certain stalwart style on the bench.
Quinnipiac finished fifth in the league and didn't manage to make the national tournament after losing a 3-game playoff series at Clarkson. They finish placed 10th in the Pairwise - where they have sat, just out of the picture, since then! It has been under the excellent style of coach Cass Turner, in the last decade, that this program has risen to prominence. They play a very disciplined, also very defensive game. Some years they are high-scoring, but this year saw closer margins to their games. They have sometimes reloaded on goaltending talent -- as they did this year, snagging transfer Kaley Doyle from Brown and replacing successful graduating goalie Logan Angers, who entered the PWHL over the summer. (She's on the Ottawa Charge though hasn't seen play yet.) They had much activity in the transfer portal, both exiting and entering. As with Cornell, they tended to score by committee this year; and somewhat as with Clarkson, they got some of their more prolific scoring from defenders. Their top scorer was sophomore forward Kahlen Lamarche (33 points in 38 games).
Yale finished 6th with a slightly better record than the previous season, even as they graduated standout center, captain Elle Hartje, who joined PWHL NY in the draft. (Hartje is the all-time leading scorer for Yale.) They can be fairly said to have rebuilt this year -- and meanwhile a lot of players will graduate this year, having effectively been two classes, those who deferred to 2021-22 because of the Ivies' canceled season and those who entered as scheduled in 2021-22. Yale's top scorer, though, was a junior this year, Carina DiAntonio. Forward Cami Bell had an exciting first-year season. The Bulldogs have stuck to a puck-possession style from coach Mark Bolding (from Red Deer, Alberta, a graduate of Norwich in VT) and often disrupt in the neutral zone; when doing well in a game, they have a strong forecheck. Goaltending is a bit in flux, as two goalies -- Pia Dukaric, the starter the last few years, as well as Mia Wendell -- are seniors. Yale already has two other goalies, though, Naomi Baechler and Anna Phillips, and looks to be bringing in more soon. Unlike other seasons, Yale did not win any games this year when outshot by an opponent. Slovenian national goaltender Dukaric previously had a few outstanding shutouts when outshot. This year she earned 3 shutouts and a good record overall. Just under half of Yale's games this year were one-goal games, but more often on the defecit if so.
Princeton continues to have some flashy players, even with the graduation of Sarah Fillier as #1 PWHL draft pick to New York, though their results this year were a little up and down. Several players -- Issy Wunder (a Patty Kazmaier top-10 finalist!), Sarah Paul, and Mackenzie Alexander -- were among the top scorers across Division 1, especially when points-per-game are evaluated. Coach Cara Morey has coached a few players who have made it to the Canadian national team level (including Fillier and Claire Thompson), and she was an assitant coach for Canada's U18 team in 2016-17 alongside assisting with other Hockey Canada appearances. Princeton's goaltending and defense were somewhat inconsistent this year. Both they and their conference opponents had high-ish penalties in matchups with them this year, and their penalty kill was not good. The power play made up for that (26 for 100).
Brown finished eighth, between Princeton and Union, and dropped off a scooch after an amazing start to conference play. Jade Iginla has been a standout there and will be a senior next year; first-year Monique Lyons led in points, signaling a positive future outlook. With coach Mel Ruzzi, Brown has been on an upward trajectory the past 3-4 years, and the rebuilding continued this year. Ruzzi has also been involved in USA Hockey, including as one of the U18 assistant coaches. The team was a bit more strapped on goaltending this year, with Doyle leaving and a younger goalie corps being drawn on. Their goals-for and goals-against ended up being pretty average/solid across the board.
Union took a step forward, including a playoffs upset of Brown, before being eliminated in two narrow playoff games at Cornell. Senior Maren Friday was a blue-line mainstay. Scoring was somewhat by committee; a previous first-year standout (the spirited Riley Walsh) left for BU. But it looks like first-year Karianne Engelbert led in goals and points. Tony Maci was in his first year as head coach, coming over from Clarkson's coaching group and replacing previous Union head coach Josh Sciba (of USA Hockey power-play coaching prominence) on his departure for an assistant job at PWHL NY. (Sciba joined current NY coach, previous Colgate head coach Greg Fargo.) Senior goaltender Sophie Matsoukas will, this year, be a big departure for the team.
RPI finished just behind Capital District travel partners Union. They continue to play a solid defensive-team style and had many close games, and some upsets, including of Colgate in OT and Yale in regulation. (RPI may be a bit of "kryptonite" for Yale, as they sometimes were in past decades on the men's side -- though the women's teams were not ranked too far apart this year.) Skoda and Trnkova are reported to be in the transfer portal, as shown on Clean Sheet Hockey (Sydney Wolf's project), and this could be difficult for the team, which otherwise hasn't had many transfer departures the past couple years. Coach Bryan Vines has been head coach since summer 2017. This season (2024-25) could be seen as a rebuild, but also perhaps a staying-constant sort of year, for RPI. (In fact, similar things could be said for a few of the teams toward the middle of the pack like Yale and Princeton.)
Dartmouth had a really slow start to the year, though some close games, and then went on an undefeated streak for a while in the middle. Senior forward Laura Fuoco and junior defender Izee Powell have been strong, along with points leader senior forward Lauren Messier. The team didn't score a lot, and they gave up a lot of shots on goal; however, all this considered, their two first-year goalies Grace Zhan and Michaela Hesová were impressive. Each has some experience at the senior(!) national-team level, Zhan at 2023 women's worlds (Division 1 Group A rather than top group) for China and Hesová seeing play at the following worlds for Czechia. Hesová was the dominant starter for the Big Green, with Zhan also starting one game (a win). Dartmouth beat St. Lawrence 2-0 near the end of the season. The big, pre-season news for Dartmouth was Maura Crowell coming over from head coaching at UMD, replacing departing head coach Liz Keady Norton (who has been a U18 head coach for Team USA). Crowell is from New England (Mass.), but -- partly because she played at Colgate -- there was some speculation at least on USCHO threads as to whether she'd fill the head coaching vacancy last summer there. (She even might have left Dartmouth shortly after accepting the Dartmouth job, per the speculation.) This has properly been a rebuild, again, there, but the goaltending has been something to work outward from. Crowell also has assistant coaching experience at Harvard.
Harvard finished at the bottom of the ECAC. Laura Bellamy was in her second season, replacing Katey Stone. That coaching change is familiar. Bellamy had been an assistant coach at UMD --and played at Harvard and done brief coaching there -- while UMD's now-head coach, in a small-world way, has Dartmouth ties (Schuler) like Crowell. Harvard's goaltending group was on the young side. Young defender Kaley MacDonald was one of the top scorers; tied with her in scoring was senior forward Gabi Davidson Adams. A few of the previous standouts, like forward Paige Lester, did not appear in a bit more than half of the games. (Gwyn Lapp was rarely in the lineup too, whether because of injury or other factors.) Harvard had one conference win, a 5-1 thumping of Yale. They played Quinnipiac fairly close in their 2-0 first-round ECAC playoff loss. They will obviously try to improve on their record next season, Bellamy continuing the rebuild.
To speak to the title of this thread, Cornell ended up rebuilding, rather than "reloading," but their results were better than any ECAC team that may have reloaded. Coach Doug Derraugh recently in Frozen Four media days described their process since 2020, with their missed #1-seed tournament appearance, as "rebuilding," in any case. This year they didn't have any one standout scorer, as with Izzy Daniel last season, but got even farther than last season and scored by committee. National goalie-of-the-year top-3 finalist Annelies Bergmann had an even better sophomore campaign than her first-year campaign. Lindzi Avar was ECAC rookie of the year and has played with US U18s. In other national-team connections, Derraugh has worked for Hockey Canada coaching on the side but apparently not of late.
(Other teams are also listed below in standings order.)
Colgate "reloaded" to some extent, with some transfers and a new coach (previously assistant coach, Stefan Decosse) who seems to be effective. They will graduate graduate student Kristýna Kaltounková, who played a physical game with a number of penalty minutes but also goals and a firing-up effect for her team. She has made her way back onto the Czech national team after an absence from there and is the first Czech national in the top-10 Patty Kazmaier selection. Colgate has also been bringing in star players, including from US and Canadian national U18 teams, in the last couple years and can be said to be reloading in that sense too. Sophomores who were strong this year (and last year) include Emma Pais, Kaia Malachino, Madeline Palumbo, and Avery Pickering. Junior Elyssa Biederman will be a senior in the fall. They lost to Minnesota in the 4-vs-5 national tourney game.
St. Lawrence continues its rise after a bunch of years in the middle of the pack. Abby Hustler had another great year after her breakout season last year. Many of their top forwards, including Hustler, Anna Segedi, Sarah Marchand, and Aly McLeod, look like they may be graduating. Emma-Sofie Nordström in net (a junior this year) has been one key to their success and one of the best-performing goaltenders in the league throughout the season. She is from Herning, Denmark -- a nation that usually flies under the radar in terms of its women's college hockey students (only a few players I think). One of the distinctive things about coach Chris Wells' style is his willingness to do an aggressive goalie pull with a few minutes left, which has resulted in at least one 3-goal comeback in recent years. This year, toward the end of the season, the strategy also led to Cornell going up 6-0 on an empty-netter (after being up 5-0)! Wellsy, as the SLU stream announcers call him, seems to have a good rapport with the players judging by their play, and so on, and the team has been fairly disciplined with relatively few penalties. They made it to the national quarterfinals and were eliminated by OSU. They slightly upset Penn State in the 1st round.
Clarkson rallied after a mid-season slump and were eliminated by Wisconsin only in the national quarterfinals (after defeating BU in the 1st round). You could say that they reloaded, with some transfers and solid recruiting classes I think, but really much like Cornell this team continues to build or maintain its strengths, playing a defensive game and protecting leads well. (They weren't able to keep their 1-goal lead on Wisconsin, but the players expressed their satisfaction with having stuck to their game plan, in the postgame press.) US national-team player and Patty Kazmaier top-10 finalist Haley Winn was a top scorer from the blue line, and Nicole Gosling has a similar style. Like Kaltounková of Colgate, these two will probably enter the PWHL draft and be picked high. Matt Desrosiers is one of the longest-serving coaches in the league and has a certain stalwart style on the bench.
Quinnipiac finished fifth in the league and didn't manage to make the national tournament after losing a 3-game playoff series at Clarkson. They finish placed 10th in the Pairwise - where they have sat, just out of the picture, since then! It has been under the excellent style of coach Cass Turner, in the last decade, that this program has risen to prominence. They play a very disciplined, also very defensive game. Some years they are high-scoring, but this year saw closer margins to their games. They have sometimes reloaded on goaltending talent -- as they did this year, snagging transfer Kaley Doyle from Brown and replacing successful graduating goalie Logan Angers, who entered the PWHL over the summer. (She's on the Ottawa Charge though hasn't seen play yet.) They had much activity in the transfer portal, both exiting and entering. As with Cornell, they tended to score by committee this year; and somewhat as with Clarkson, they got some of their more prolific scoring from defenders. Their top scorer was sophomore forward Kahlen Lamarche (33 points in 38 games).
Yale finished 6th with a slightly better record than the previous season, even as they graduated standout center, captain Elle Hartje, who joined PWHL NY in the draft. (Hartje is the all-time leading scorer for Yale.) They can be fairly said to have rebuilt this year -- and meanwhile a lot of players will graduate this year, having effectively been two classes, those who deferred to 2021-22 because of the Ivies' canceled season and those who entered as scheduled in 2021-22. Yale's top scorer, though, was a junior this year, Carina DiAntonio. Forward Cami Bell had an exciting first-year season. The Bulldogs have stuck to a puck-possession style from coach Mark Bolding (from Red Deer, Alberta, a graduate of Norwich in VT) and often disrupt in the neutral zone; when doing well in a game, they have a strong forecheck. Goaltending is a bit in flux, as two goalies -- Pia Dukaric, the starter the last few years, as well as Mia Wendell -- are seniors. Yale already has two other goalies, though, Naomi Baechler and Anna Phillips, and looks to be bringing in more soon. Unlike other seasons, Yale did not win any games this year when outshot by an opponent. Slovenian national goaltender Dukaric previously had a few outstanding shutouts when outshot. This year she earned 3 shutouts and a good record overall. Just under half of Yale's games this year were one-goal games, but more often on the defecit if so.
Princeton continues to have some flashy players, even with the graduation of Sarah Fillier as #1 PWHL draft pick to New York, though their results this year were a little up and down. Several players -- Issy Wunder (a Patty Kazmaier top-10 finalist!), Sarah Paul, and Mackenzie Alexander -- were among the top scorers across Division 1, especially when points-per-game are evaluated. Coach Cara Morey has coached a few players who have made it to the Canadian national team level (including Fillier and Claire Thompson), and she was an assitant coach for Canada's U18 team in 2016-17 alongside assisting with other Hockey Canada appearances. Princeton's goaltending and defense were somewhat inconsistent this year. Both they and their conference opponents had high-ish penalties in matchups with them this year, and their penalty kill was not good. The power play made up for that (26 for 100).
Brown finished eighth, between Princeton and Union, and dropped off a scooch after an amazing start to conference play. Jade Iginla has been a standout there and will be a senior next year; first-year Monique Lyons led in points, signaling a positive future outlook. With coach Mel Ruzzi, Brown has been on an upward trajectory the past 3-4 years, and the rebuilding continued this year. Ruzzi has also been involved in USA Hockey, including as one of the U18 assistant coaches. The team was a bit more strapped on goaltending this year, with Doyle leaving and a younger goalie corps being drawn on. Their goals-for and goals-against ended up being pretty average/solid across the board.
Union took a step forward, including a playoffs upset of Brown, before being eliminated in two narrow playoff games at Cornell. Senior Maren Friday was a blue-line mainstay. Scoring was somewhat by committee; a previous first-year standout (the spirited Riley Walsh) left for BU. But it looks like first-year Karianne Engelbert led in goals and points. Tony Maci was in his first year as head coach, coming over from Clarkson's coaching group and replacing previous Union head coach Josh Sciba (of USA Hockey power-play coaching prominence) on his departure for an assistant job at PWHL NY. (Sciba joined current NY coach, previous Colgate head coach Greg Fargo.) Senior goaltender Sophie Matsoukas will, this year, be a big departure for the team.
RPI finished just behind Capital District travel partners Union. They continue to play a solid defensive-team style and had many close games, and some upsets, including of Colgate in OT and Yale in regulation. (RPI may be a bit of "kryptonite" for Yale, as they sometimes were in past decades on the men's side -- though the women's teams were not ranked too far apart this year.) Skoda and Trnkova are reported to be in the transfer portal, as shown on Clean Sheet Hockey (Sydney Wolf's project), and this could be difficult for the team, which otherwise hasn't had many transfer departures the past couple years. Coach Bryan Vines has been head coach since summer 2017. This season (2024-25) could be seen as a rebuild, but also perhaps a staying-constant sort of year, for RPI. (In fact, similar things could be said for a few of the teams toward the middle of the pack like Yale and Princeton.)
Dartmouth had a really slow start to the year, though some close games, and then went on an undefeated streak for a while in the middle. Senior forward Laura Fuoco and junior defender Izee Powell have been strong, along with points leader senior forward Lauren Messier. The team didn't score a lot, and they gave up a lot of shots on goal; however, all this considered, their two first-year goalies Grace Zhan and Michaela Hesová were impressive. Each has some experience at the senior(!) national-team level, Zhan at 2023 women's worlds (Division 1 Group A rather than top group) for China and Hesová seeing play at the following worlds for Czechia. Hesová was the dominant starter for the Big Green, with Zhan also starting one game (a win). Dartmouth beat St. Lawrence 2-0 near the end of the season. The big, pre-season news for Dartmouth was Maura Crowell coming over from head coaching at UMD, replacing departing head coach Liz Keady Norton (who has been a U18 head coach for Team USA). Crowell is from New England (Mass.), but -- partly because she played at Colgate -- there was some speculation at least on USCHO threads as to whether she'd fill the head coaching vacancy last summer there. (She even might have left Dartmouth shortly after accepting the Dartmouth job, per the speculation.) This has properly been a rebuild, again, there, but the goaltending has been something to work outward from. Crowell also has assistant coaching experience at Harvard.
Harvard finished at the bottom of the ECAC. Laura Bellamy was in her second season, replacing Katey Stone. That coaching change is familiar. Bellamy had been an assistant coach at UMD --and played at Harvard and done brief coaching there -- while UMD's now-head coach, in a small-world way, has Dartmouth ties (Schuler) like Crowell. Harvard's goaltending group was on the young side. Young defender Kaley MacDonald was one of the top scorers; tied with her in scoring was senior forward Gabi Davidson Adams. A few of the previous standouts, like forward Paige Lester, did not appear in a bit more than half of the games. (Gwyn Lapp was rarely in the lineup too, whether because of injury or other factors.) Harvard had one conference win, a 5-1 thumping of Yale. They played Quinnipiac fairly close in their 2-0 first-round ECAC playoff loss. They will obviously try to improve on their record next season, Bellamy continuing the rebuild.
Anyone catch the FF Final? What a shocking, last two minutes. Personally was pulling for OSU. This one will sting for them for quite some time. Too lazy to check but the cards often seem to fall the way they did; seeds 1-4 in the FF and seeds 1-2 battle for the Title. They are on a different level playing field. Curious about PSU, which fares well in a weaker conference but falters on the national stage.
Nice recap, BWW. Cornell proved once again that goaltending will steal the show. In the recent past, Qpac, SLU and Clarkson have ridden their G to success. Murphy had some great games but at times her own questionable play and thin defense let her down. Her replacements are untested and extremely vulnerable. I don’t expect them to impress right away but hope I’m wrong. We need impactful players no matter what year/playing time they are.
There was a lot of turmoil at the end of last season and I had lowered expectations. Our GAA this year was worrisome and unpredictable. Transfers out make me very sad. We know who next season’s preseason No. 1 will be. Will be anxious to read Coach’s formal release for next year’s class as well as our schedule. Would be nice to defeat OOC teams, esp in the WCHA.
Congrats to the Badgers again.
Nice recap, BWW. Cornell proved once again that goaltending will steal the show. In the recent past, Qpac, SLU and Clarkson have ridden their G to success. Murphy had some great games but at times her own questionable play and thin defense let her down. Her replacements are untested and extremely vulnerable. I don’t expect them to impress right away but hope I’m wrong. We need impactful players no matter what year/playing time they are.
There was a lot of turmoil at the end of last season and I had lowered expectations. Our GAA this year was worrisome and unpredictable. Transfers out make me very sad. We know who next season’s preseason No. 1 will be. Will be anxious to read Coach’s formal release for next year’s class as well as our schedule. Would be nice to defeat OOC teams, esp in the WCHA.
Congrats to the Badgers again.