The women’s hockey team deserves your attention.
It’s not the 22-6-4 overall record, the ranking as the seventh-best team in the nation, or the sheer fact that classmates should support one another.
What’s impressive, in my humble opinion, are the numbers behind the players’ success, and the talent with which they’ve done it.
Nine freshmen made the roster out of camp, and 15 underclassmen make up the slight majority of the 24-woman roster. If anything, inexperience at the collegiate level should have weighed this team down in a demanding, fast-paced Hockey East.
Instead, this team has thrived on the ice. A season after playing to a 16-13-8 overall record (6-10-5 Hockey East), and falling just short of the school’s first Hockey East Championship in a 3-1 loss to Boston College, the Huskies are tearing through their opponents this season and racking up hardware left and right.
Earlier this month, the team carried home Northeastern’s 15th Beanpot trophy in style, as junior forward Casey Pickett’s overtime game-winning goal on Boston University’s home ice sent the Terriers back towards Commonwealth Avenue empty handed.
This Sunday, less than two weeks after the Beanpot final, the Huskies clinched the program’s first Hockey East regular season title, a 2-1 victory over Providence College on Alumni Day at Matthews Arena.
And what’s worse is, for all the accomplishments this team has achieved this season, the talent on this team is what gets the least amount of recognition.
Freshmam forward Kendall Coyne is one of the best athletes on campus, if not the best, and could end up as the best women’s hockey player in school history should she stay healthy over her next three years with the team. But Coyne is an athlete that 95 percent of the student population couldn’t pick out from a lineup, and that’s a shame.
Only a freshman on this year’s squad, Coyne leads the team in goals (26), is second in assists (19), and is first in points (45). She has taken nearly twice as many shots on net as the next best player on the team, and singlehandedly registers one of every five shots the Huskies made.
Coyne has put up gaudy numbers as a first-year, and by the end of the season, she could break into the top-10 single season scoring records for Northeastern women’s hockey – as a freshman.
Oh, and then there’s the whole matter of being a 19-year-old on the US Women’s National team, having notched four goals and two assists as the United States took home the gold medal at the 2011 International Ice Hockey Federation Championships in Zurich, Switzerland last spring, and helping the national team prepare for the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
Not to be outdone by her teammate, senior netminder Florence Schelling has been on the Switzerland National Team for the last five seasons. She was between the pipes for the Swiss in both Turin in 2006 and Vancouver in 2010, and has been to seven world championships. Her senior season has been an historic one, registering a 20-5-4 record with a solid 1.43 goals against average (3rd in the nation), a .950 save percentage (T-1st) and eight shutouts (1st). This week, Schelling was voted to the Hockey East All-Decade team.
Freshman forward Lucie Povova was a member of the Czech women’s national team that swept the competition en route to an International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) Division II World Championship last April. Povova has scored seven goals and 13 assist for 20 points in her first season with Northeastern.
Then there is junior forward Casey Pickett, who more than doubled her career point total with a line of 18-23-41 for the season. Pickett may not be a national team member, but has meant just as much to the success of the women’s team as anyone else on the squad.
And these four are just a few of the accomplishments this team’s players have gathered as a whole. National championships, U-18 titles, national team camp invites, you name it, this roster has two or three players who have done it.
There’s nothing I can really say that will convince fans to attend one of the women’s games, especially considering the season is now over and the Hockey East tournament will be taking place down in Hyannis, but this team deserves more public acknowledgement, if not increased attention from both students and fans of the game.
The players on this roster are some of the best in the world, and generally, that’s something true sports fans can appreciate.
– Andy MacDougall can be reached at [email protected].
