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Wisconsin Women's Hockey 2023-2024

Maybe this explains why the Muzzinater goes all in on the transfer portal because the previous year, this year and next year, the sinners have just killed it on the recruiting front.

She's never not gotten any recruit she as looked at, remember? She goes all in on the transfer portal cause she's getting destroyed in recruiting highschoolers.
 
The Hockey News' write-up of the Badgers' incoming class

https://thehockeynews.com/womens/col...ich-get-richer

Thanks for sharing. This website I have not checked out in years. I'm following the author now. Watts a find!

This class may be better than I had thought! Vasseur sounds like she'll fill the hole SS left as the smoothest skater on the team. The D Corps is ridiculously deep. They may have to dress 7 D and 11 F just to get the D all the playing time they deserve. I see no reason to ever shorten the bench. This is bonkers.

Apparently next year's class is pretty decent too.
 
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She's never not gotten any recruit she as looked at, remember? She goes all in on the transfer portal cause she's getting destroyed in recruiting highschoolers.

The muzzinator has some pretty good recruits so not really getting "destroyed" per se but more of the issue is what role will the incoming freshmen have with 6 high level veteran players transferring in. Will they take to lower line roles, reduced playing time, or even sitting some games? Who knows? if it's anything like last years freshmen class for the Yuckeyes then some of them will be potentially moving on.

In the duckies and bunnies world of slOwSU land everyting is hunky-dory, peachy keen, delightful, copacetic and such...For now.
 
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New 12 minute interview with Cami Kronish about signing with AIK in Sweden, what she's looking forward to playing in Europe, her experience at Madison and a fun story about being in France when she found out she was invited to the White House with the team.

https://thehockeynews.com/womens/international/watch-cami-kronish-discusses-signing-in-sweden

She also mentions meeting incoming goalie Ava McNaughton at a goalie camp and opines that the Bishop Kearney grad will be a star in Madison.
 
Originally posted by Scott_TG View Post
The Hockey News' write-up of the Badgers' incoming class

https://thehockeynews.com/womens/col...ich-get-richer

Thanks to Scott_TG for posting this link. I had been unable to find much information about Vasseur other than MJ’s somewhat generic comments about her in his announcement of the incoming class members. The author of this article was more expansive, and his assessment of her skills paints a very positive picture of what she may bring to the team. I wish he had had more to say about Gorbatenko as well since I share Scott’s assessment of her play in the U-18s last summer and feel that she may prove to be a pleasant surprise in the incoming class. With that as an intro, on to my assessment of the coming season’s prospects.

At the end of last season’s forum, I put forth the possibility that the combination of the returning members of last year’s team and the incoming recruits raised the possibility for a perfect 23-24 season. In retrospect the amazing finish in which the Badgers won their 7[SUP]th[/SUP] title may have induced me to think that the combination of the returning players and the quality of the incoming class make it possible. However, I did express several caveats:
  • the need for continued improvement by last year’s recruits;
  • the incoming class meeting at least some of the expectations for them;
  • how the vacancies in last year’s lines would get filled.
As a group, I think all of last year’s recruits elevated their levels of play in the second half of the season. The one exception might be Harvey who was a force to contend with from the opening faceoff of the season. Jungels was excellent on D throughout the season as attested to by her nationally best +45 rating. However, although she was noted for her offensive skills in high school, Jungels did not engage much in the offense until the second half of the season. In part I think this may have been due to having to adjust to playing with Harvey, an exceptionally talented linemate whose prowess on offense as well as D was at another level. As a result, Jungels had to pay more attention to D while she worked to define her role on offense. By the end of last season, Jungels had become more active on O, and I anticipate her scoring numbers will improve this season. Expecting Harvey to improve is a bit difficult to expect, but anything is possible for her. If the other returning players do step up their games and the new ones meet the expectations for them even partially, opponents may find they need to pay less attention to her and she may become another Jaques.

I believe all of last year’s F recruits closed the season on upswings. Laila Edwards was more active around the crease, and I will be surprised if she isn’t even more so this coming season. Her goal against MN in the NCAA semifinal was a thing of beauty. With her size, I also would like to see her find ways occasionally to position herself in the slot from where she could do damage with her wrist shot, one which she “snaps off” with considerable speed and is difficult for goalies to respond to. Like Harvey, Simms was a force to contend with from the get-go, and Enright seemed to blossom in the latter part of the season’s second half and the NCAA tournament. I will be surprised if these two don’t continue to be paired on a line as added time together becoming a major plus for the offense, one opposing teams will find it difficult to deal with.

This brings me to my final concern for the Badgers in the coming season – how to distribute all the talent most effectively. At least at the beginning of the season, I favor configurations for 2 of the O lines. One is to retain the Simms-Eden-Enright threesome since I believe their styles and skillsets matchup well and all of them will get better with more playing time together. I also favor starting with Hall on a line with O’Brien and Wheeler; all of them have speed and aggressiveness which should benefit from Hall’s added playmaking skills as well.

That leaves a line with LailaE and Curl needing a 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] member which would leave the remaining 3 as the 4[SUP]th[/SUP] line. Initially I thought Woz would be the choice to complete Line #3, leaving Picard, Gorbatenko and Vasseur as line 4. But the added information about Vasseur’s skills in the article Scott_TG provided makes the choice less clear to me (and she does have experience playing with LailaE). I also agree with Scott that Gorbatenko may be a pleasant surpise. Not that he needs my blessing, I am content to leave the choice for the 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] and 4th lines to MJ content that both will prove productive.


On the D side, Harvey-Jungels is a given. I also think Potter and Murphy are a clear choice to be paired, a potential clone of Jungels-Harvey. There also now are 4 players to choose from to make a strong 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] D line albeit one with less offensive upside as the other two.

Now, on the matter of my perfect season comment after the Badgers won #7. MN and OSU certainly remain serious threats. Both have solid incoming recruiting classes and Muzerall did extremely well adding experienced plyers from the portal. MN still will have Abbey Murphy and Skylar Vetter; OSU, Webster and Buglioni. However, MN loses Heise, Grace Zumwinkle, Boreen, and Skaja (all of whom were among its top 5 scorers) and Oden at D, their #9 scorer. OSU loses Maltais, Levis, and Rosenthal at forward (all in its top 6 scorers) as well as Jaques and Bizal - its 4[SUP]th[/SUP] and 9[SUP]th[/SUP] scorers. For both, the numbers and quality of their losses will be difficult to replace. The Badgers do lose Comphers, SS, and GS but this is far less significant for the Badgers.

On a final, somewhat related note, OSU also may be facing several difficult years maintaining the strength of its team. Four of this year’s six portal transfers will exhaust their eligibility in 23-24. Looking at last year’s roster, it appears that perhaps another 10 players will exhaust theirs too (including their top 2 returning scorers, Webster and Gardiner). Additionally, there is the loss of 4 of last year’s recruits and 1 sophomore. Muzerall certainly is a master at tapping the portal, but the combination of these numbers would seem to pose a challenge for maintaining the strength of her roster even for her. And the impact of adding 6 transfers from the portal seemingly will impact the playing time for returning seniors and juniors on the team, potentially creating unhappiness. The willingness to use the portal to such an extent also may give future recruits pause about signing out of concern that they might have a similar experience in efforts to remain competitive. It will be interesting to see how she handles it.

In closing, my apologies for rambling at such length.

PS UW is not alone having a volunteer goalie coach. MN lists Chris Esposito as their volunteer goalie coach; OSU lists Bailey Seagraves, who runs a goaltending school; UMD has Maddie Rooney; StC, Megan Van Beusekom-Sweerin. The other WCHA schools and eastern schools don't have any volunteer coaches. Personally, I don't see why NCAA should care, but it is interesting that the rule to ban them looks like it is aimed at the 4 perennial powers in women's hockey.
 
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Here are links to information about a future Badger recruit, I believe for 25-26. But I think she starts her junior year in high school this year so not sure how she has managed to commit already, but she definitely is convinced she has. She looks interesting.

The first one is her announcement:
Charlotte Pieckenhagen on Instagram: “I am so excited and honoured to announce my commitment to play NCAA Division 1 hockey for the University of Wisconsin. Thank you to…”

This article is about her involvement in competitive rowing, something she picked up from her dad who was on several championship teams at Harvard and also was a member of Canada’s national team. She does as part of her off season strength and conditioning program for reasons she states in the article. Based on watching the rowing competitions in the Olympics and several collegiate competitions, her views on rowing’s benefits certainly make sense. The races demand lots of both endurance and strength. UW has a women’s crew team that competes in the spring and I won’t be surprised if she chooses to join it – like Webster and field hockey but without any overlap of the two seasons.

Pieckenhagens represent Canada together (hockeycanada.ca)
​​​​​​​
 
Here are links to information about a future Badger recruit, I believe for 25-26. But I think she starts her junior year in high school this year so not sure how she has managed to commit already, but she definitely is convinced she has. She looks interesting.

The first one is her announcement:
Charlotte Pieckenhagen on Instagram: “I am so excited and honoured to announce my commitment to play NCAA Division 1 hockey for the University of Wisconsin. Thank you to…”

This article is about her involvement in competitive rowing, something she picked up from her dad who was on several championship teams at Harvard and also was a member of Canada’s national team. She does as part of her off season strength and conditioning program for reasons she states in the article. Based on watching the rowing competitions in the Olympics and several collegiate competitions, her views on rowing’s benefits certainly make sense. The races demand lots of both endurance and strength. UW has a women’s crew team that competes in the spring and I won’t be surprised if she chooses to join it – like Webster and field hockey but without any overlap of the two seasons.

Pieckenhagens represent Canada together (hockeycanada.ca)
​​​​​​​

I certainly wouldn't say "no overlap" for the two sports/teams. Besides the fact that crew has a more brief fall season that she would miss entirely, the first competition this past spring was on March 18-19, and I think the hockey team had something going that weekend. And a few minutes looking, she appears to row twos and fours right now. She would miss entirely any sort of training period leading up to the first spring competition; and while I am certainly no expert, I would think that that training period is quite important is setting pairs and lineups and developing chemistry between those pairings. That is, I don't know how hard it might be to 'crack' the lineup and get a seat in a boat after missing that training period (and doing so might be even harder rowing twos and fours than eights). Maybe it's no big deal, but maybe it is. Anyway, and interesting pair of sports to be good at.
 
This brings me to my final concern for the Badgers in the coming season – how to distribute all the talent most effectively. At least at the beginning of the season, I favor configurations for 2 of the O lines. One is to retain the Simms-Eden-Enright threesome since I believe their styles and skillsets matchup well and all of them will get better with more playing time together. I also favor starting with Hall on a line with O’Brien and Wheeler; all of them have speed and aggressiveness which should benefit from Hall’s added playmaking skills as well.

That leaves a line with LailaE and Curl needing a 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] member which would leave the remaining 3 as the 4[SUP]th[/SUP] line. Initially I thought Woz would be the choice to complete Line #3, leaving Picard, Gorbatenko and Vasseur as line 4. But the added information about Vasseur’s skills in the article Scott_TG provided makes the choice less clear to me (and she does have experience playing with LailaE). I also agree with Scott that Gorbatenko may be a pleasant surpise. Not that he needs my blessing, I am content to leave the choice for the 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] and 4th lines to MJ content that both will prove productive.

I'd like to see Picard center the 3rd line in your line-up. I think she has earned a shot at that. Gorbatenko is really being disrespected in that article. She's a U18 player, so she's got the bigwig's attention at Team USA. You aren't on that team if you are not talented. A 4th line of Gorbatenko, Woz and Vasseur should be on a regular rotation. No need to shorten the bench. They should also kill penalties on a regular basis and keep the other players fresh for 5 on 5 and pp's.

The biggest thing to me to think about Fr F's is are they going to play tenacious D in all 3 zones. That is the key to UW's success, tenacious D and score a few goals. Wink.
 
Now, on the matter of my perfect season comment after the Badgers won #7. MN and OSU certainly remain serious threats. Both have solid incoming recruiting classes and Muzerall did extremely well adding experienced plyers from the portal. MN still will have Abbey Murphy and Skylar Vetter; OSU, Webster and Buglioni. However, MN loses Heise, Grace Zumwinkle, Boreen, and Skaja (all of whom were among its top 5 scorers) and Oden at D, their #9 scorer. OSU loses Maltais, Levis, and Rosenthal at forward (all in its top 6 scorers) as well as Jaques and Bizal - its 4[SUP]th[/SUP] and 9[SUP]th[/SUP] scorers. For both, the numbers and quality of their losses will be difficult to replace. The Badgers do lose Comphers, SS, and GS but this is far less significant for the Badgers.

I have been wanting someone to so some serious analysis on the rodents and tosu, and you did it! The rodents are screwed. OSU is practically a new team, by the end of the year they will be gelled causing a lot of calamity. MJ will keep the boat steady as she goes.
 
I don't think Ian Kennedy meant to insult Gorbatenko. I interpreted the lack of description as he just didn't know enough about her to summarize which I admit is strange considering she played for Team USA. In his defense he is trying to cover collegiate, pro and international women's hockey by himself for The Hockey News so I think he just didn't take notes on her watching the U18 tourney and couldn't remember anything, I don't think it was malicious.
 
Now that the men have hired a goalie coach, I hope it becomes official Greeny is ths 4th paid assistant for the ladies.

I don't think the snub of Gorby was intentional, but it was lazy. That guy sure bangs the drum on some topics, it's almost too much.
 
Omg, it almost seems like half a paragraph got missed on Gorbatenko. Made me laugh out loud. Oh well. Maybe next time. I agree it would not be intentional.

The high school stuff in terms of stats is pretty Greek to me anyway. Playing for USA or Canada U18 is a reasonable indicator though.
 
A couple of replies and then a brief comment about my view on lines generally.

First, RobertEarle is correct that the college rowing season prohibits someone like Pieckenhagen competing in both hockey and rowing with the Badgers – it will not be a Webster and field hockey scenario. But there is the Mendota rowing club which may be able to accommodate her interest in rowing as part of her off season routine. And, who knows, she may be able to entice a few teammates to join her.

And I concur with TimothyA that Picard certainly could be the 3rd player on a line with Curl and LEdwards (which I assume are the other two in the 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] line in his post). In my view, both she and Woz have proven themselves and either one would be a good addition to round out that pairing. And that brings me to my general view on lines.
I believe the use of numbers generally is used to designate the relative strength of the lines not just that there are 4 distinct groups of players. Line 1 is seen as the best line followed by Line 2 down to Line 4, and this typically does reflect their relative strengths. However, I find myself having difficulty applying this view of line numbers with the current group of Badger forwards. While I have suggested memberships for 2 lines based on my assessment of how they would best fit together, it was not intended to assign any relative status. Instead, it reflects that I lack sufficient information to do the same for distributing the remaining 6 Fs over the other 2 lines. In fact, while it may be fantasy (much like Pieckenhagen competing in both hockey and rowing), I think it may well be possible for those 6 to be assigned in a way that will give the Badgers 4 very solid lines – all with different strengths deserving of roughly equal playing time. If so, opponents would have to contend with defending 4 lines with different strengths which seemingly would confer an advantage the Badgers could exploit on offense.

So, I am hoping that 4 quality lines take the ice in late September and they in fact prove themselves as I envisage. Furthermore, I hope this will mean that all four get roughly equal amounts of playing both to improve their cohesiveness and their skills as they move through the season. If all of this comes to pass and works out well, it also is a model that could be applied next year when a similar situation may exist with the incoming class of Fs. And, while I am engaging in fantasy, a chance to have meaningful playing time your very first year might make the Badgers more attractive to future recruits.

A final point. It appears this year’s schedule will start with 12 games against teams that don’t appear terribly threatening, which should allow the Badgers to sort the lines out well before they hit the last 6 games of the first half of conference play against the other big 3. Have to run. I ran this by my therapist at our last session and he want to discuss it with me and possibly of medication.
 
A final point. It appears this year’s schedule will start with 12 games against teams that don’t appear terribly threatening, which should allow the Badgers to sort the lines out well before they hit the last 6 games of the first half of conference play against the other big 3.

You know who the first 12 games will be against? Tell us, please! I'd very much like to know what the NC schedule will be.

We know Lindenwood at the end of September, and the the conference series starting in mid October. But not the weekend in between. And if you're saying 12, you either know that weekend, or the open weekend Nov 10th, or maybe both.

So who's on the schedule?
 
You know who the first 12 games will be against? Tell us, please! I'd very much like to know what the NC schedule will be.

We know Lindenwood at the end of September, and the the conference series starting in mid October. But not the weekend in between. And if you're saying 12, you either know that weekend, or the open weekend Nov 10th, or maybe both.

So who's on the schedule?

My statement about 12 games prior to starting conference play is based on assuming that the Badgers will continue to schedule two opponents in the weeks preceding the start of WCHA play. This approach to scheduling began for the 2017-2018 season and has been used for 4 of the 5 past seasons, the exception being 20-21 when many schools suspended hockey for the season in the midst of the pandemic. If the Badgers do schedule another opponent in the week following Lindenwood, these 4 would be added to the 8 of Bucky’s first 4 WCHA schools. I apologize for failing to preface the number by making my assumption clear.
 
My statement about 12 games prior to starting conference play is based on assuming that the Badgers will continue to schedule two opponents in the weeks preceding the start of WCHA play. This approach to scheduling began for the 2017-2018 season and has been used for 4 of the 5 past seasons, the exception being 20-21 when many schools suspended hockey for the season in the midst of the pandemic. If the Badgers do schedule another opponent in the week following Lindenwood, these 4 would be added to the 8 of Bucky’s first 4 WCHA schools. I apologize for failing to preface the number by making my assumption clear.

So if you don't know who they're playing, how do you know they won't be "terribly threatening"?
 
The 2022-23 team being honored at the Brewers game today. Not sure what all that will mean: first pitch, maybe make up the racers for the sausage race (the national champ volleyball team got to do that last year).

I'm sure it's a coincidence, but it occurs to me the game is against a team from Ohio, the Cincinnati Reds. :-)

--------------------------

Britta Curl threw out the first pitch (JUUUST a bit outside...), MJ was interviewed during the telecast, no word on the sausage race. Reds, unfortunately, won the game 8-5.
 
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Remember back a couple years ago when the schedule was announced really late, because Princeton (I think it was) cancelled and Wisconsin had to come up with a replacement NC team and ended up going to LIU in their first year playing DI?

I looked it up: That "really late" announcement came on July 12th....

Why don't we have the NC schedule yet? Nobody wants to play UW? Something else?
 
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