Thursday, September 18, 2025

Women’s Notes: Drop the Puck

College Hockey Season Begins Friday

Ready or not, here it comes!

The 2025-26 NCAA Division I women’s hockey season arrives Friday night with a trio of non-conference games: Minnesota Duluth at Mercyhurst, Minnesota State at RPI, and Lindenwood at St. Cloud State.

St. Lawrence and Colgate will also square off in an exhibition tune-up Friday.

On Saturday, the slate features four non-conference tilts and seven exhibition games. There’s Sunday action, too, with St. Thomas and Post concluding their two-game series, while Ohio State hosts exhibition foe Durham West from Ontario.

Visit the links below to stay on top of all the action during opening week and throughout the season.

Let’s play hockey.

Daily Scoreboard | National Schedule | Scoring Leaders | Goaltending Leaders

Poll Position:

The first two national polls of the college hockey season were unveiled earlier this week, with defending NCAA champion Wisconsin coming in as the unanimous No. 1 team in both.

National runner-up Ohio State, followed by Minnesota and Cornell, were ranked second through fourth in both, while Minnesota Duluth (USA Hockey/The Rink Live) and Colgate (USCHO.com) each received a fifth-place nod.

Click HERE to view both the USA Today/The Rink Live and USCHO.com polls.

Conference Call:

All five conferences have also released their respective preseason league polls:

Atlantic Hockey preseason No. 1: Penn State | Link
ECAC Hockey preseason No. 1: Cornell | Link
Hockey East preseason No. 1: UConn | Link
NEWHA preseason No. 1: Sacred Heart | Link
WCHA preseason No. 1: Wisconsin | Link

Hen-Picked:

The First State has its first NCAA Division I hockey team.

Nearly two years after announcing the formation of its Division I women’s hockey program, the University of Delaware Blue Hens will begin play in 2025-26. The 45th program in NCAA DI women’s hockey, Delaware is a member of Atlantic Hockey America and makes its debut Sept. 26 on home ice against LIU.

Head coach Allison Coomey (Niagara ’02, ’08) was hired after a seven-year stint on the Penn State staff. Her coaching career also includes nine years at Boston University. She’ll ice a youthful Blue Hens roster that features 17 freshmen, two juniors, two seniors and one graduate student.

New Faces in New Places:

Besides Delaware’s Coomey, a trio of schools will have new faces behind the bench in 2025-26:

Post: Brandon Brown (interim)
Princeton: Courtney Kessel
St. Cloud State: Mira Jalosuo

Brown, a Post alum and the men’s program’s all-time leader in games played, was appointed as women’s interim head coach in May.

Kessel and Jalosuo are both replacing coaches who received PWHL opportunities during the offseason; former Princeton head coach Cara Gardner Morey was named general manager of PWHL Vancouver in May, while former SCSU coach Brian Idalski was hired by Gardner Morey a month later as the expansion franchise’s first head coach.

Guess Who’s Back?:

A pair of finalists for the 2025 Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award are returning to Wisconsin for their senior seasons.

Forward Laila Edwards (Cleveland Heights, Ohio) and defender Caroline Harvey (Salem, N.H.) are back for the defending national champion Badgers after combining for 53 goals and 134 points a season ago. They’ll once again be firmly in the Patty Kaz mix after former teammate and national scoring leader Casey O’Brien captured the award in 2025.

Unsurprisingly, both players are part of UW’s leadership group in 2025-26 – Harvey as team captain and Edwards as an alternate captain.

Home Sweet Home:

It’s a new era for Union College hockey, which will open the doors this season on the brand-new M&T Bank Center in Schenectady.

The $50 million dollar venue, located near campus at Mohawk Harbor, provides the Garnet Chargers and their fans with modern amenities with a seating capacity of 2,200.

Union women’s hockey will play the first game in M&T Bank Center on Sept. 26 against Franklin Pierce.

Notebook Quotebook:

“I grew up in small-town Dousman, Wisconsin, and my goal was always just to play for the Badgers. It wasn’t to play in the Olympics or for Team USA. It was to skate for my home-state school and learn as much as I could.”

— Former Wisconsin star, Olympic gold medalist and 2025 Hockey Hall of Fame inductee Brianna Decker (source: UWBadgers.com).

PWHL Note of the Week:

This past June, 45 of the 48 players (94%) selected during the six-round PWHL Draft came from NCAA Division I hockey, including No. 1 overall pick Kristýna Kaltounková of Colgate.

Expansion franchises Vancouver and Seattle both used their first-ever draft picks on former NCAA stars, taking Michelle Karvinen (North Dakota, 2011-14) and Jenna Bugliosi (Ohio State, 2020-25) seventh and eighth overall, respectively.

Fries at the Bottom of the Bag:

Former collegian and U.S. Olympian Tara Mounsey (Brown’ 00) will be inducted into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2025. A two-time Patty Kaz finalist and an Ivy League and ECAC Hockey Rookie of the Year, Mounsey was also a member of the 1998 U.S. National Team that won its first-ever gold medal, as well as the 2002 squad that captured silver … Earlier this summer, it was announced that Jennifer Botterill (Harvard ’03) and Brianna Decker (Wisconsin ’13) would go into the Hockey Hall of Fame as part of its Class of 2025. A two-time Patty Kaz winner and the leading scorer in NCAA Division I women’s hockey history, Botterill also won three Olympic gold medals for Canada. Decker led Wisconsin to a national championship in 2011 and won the Patty Kaz the following season. She also led Team USA to Olympic gold in 2018.

Conference Websites

Atlantic Hockey America | ECAC Hockey | Hockey East | NEWHA | WCHA

College Hockey Inc. Resources:

Did you know? 97% of NCAA Division I women’s hockey players earn their degree!