It happens every four years. Echoes of some of the greatest women's hockey players ever become a larger than life presence around the halls of AMSOIL Arena. One program is undoubtedly synonymous with the Winter Olympic Games -- the University of MInnesota Duluth.
No program in the history of women's Division I NCAA hockey has had more Winter Olympians than UMD. On the 20th year anniversary of women's hockey in the Winter Olympic games, the Bulldogs as a program have now sent 31 current or former players on to women's hockey biggest stage, including four who will make their debut this weekend -- Maddie Rooney (United States), Sidney Morin (United States), Brigette Lacquette (Canada) and Evelina Suonpaa (Finland).
In fact, a total of nine current and former players will suit up for five different teams, including Haley Irwin and Jocelyne Larocque (Canada), Lara Stalder (Switzerland), Pernilla Winberg and Maria Lindh (Sweden) -- and that doesn't even include former player Sarah Murray, who at the helm of host South Korea, becomes the first Bulldog alum to become a head coach in the Winter Olympic Games.
To grasp the level of Olympic talent that has come through the door of the Bulldog program, one has to look no further than UMD's record book. In fact, one look at the top-10 all-time scorers in program history, and it reads like a who's who of Olympic -- not just college hockey -- greats. The first seven players are all Olympians, and all but just two are multiple-time Olympians. 11 of the 20 players to reach the 100 point mark are Olympians, with again, nine of the 11 having suited up in multiple Olympic Games. Of the six players to have recorded 200 or more career points, four of the six made four-consecutive Olympic appearances, and between the six 200 point players, they own a staggering seven Olympic gold medals, four Olympic silver medals and three Olympic bronze medals.
A statistical junkie's dream, all 10 players who own the most career assists as a Bulldog are Olympians, and six of the seven goaltenders who own the most wins, as well as six of the top eight in career saves, are also, you guessed it, Olympians.
The Familiar Olympic Sized Hole
There is a trade-off that UMD knows all too well for harboring all that Olympic talent, however -- every four years, UMD loses players to either national team centralizations or Olympic roster commitments. Most of the hype this past season has centered around current redshirt junior goaltender Rooney, who has highlighted the Bulldogs Olympic reality since it was announced the Andover, Minn. native was named to the 2017-18 U.S. Women's National Team on May 5. Rooney was one of 23 players that lived and trained together from September outside Tampa, Florida until the U.S. Olympic Team was announced on Jan. 1. Rooney, just the third-ever U.S. Olympian from UMD, joins a long list of former Bulldogs who have sat out the Olympic year in order to represent their countries of origin on the world's biggest stage.
Most recently, two years before Rooney set foot on the UMD campus, the Bulldogs lost three players during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, including then freshman and former All-American forward Stalder (Switzerland), who missed eight of 36 games over the 2013-14 season, as well defenseman Tea Villila (Finland), who also missed eight of 36 games. Like Rooney, Canada's Lacquette centralized for the fall of the 2013 season before the defenseman was one of the last Canadian National Team players cut.
Lacquette's Canadian Olympic Team redemption ironically had played out in similar fashion four years earlier in the form of 2014 Canadian gold medalist Jocelyne Larocque. A junior defenseman in the 2009-10 season, Larocque, like Lacquette and Rooney after her, missed the first part of the season to centralized with Team Canada. Like Lacquette, she was one of the last players omitted from the 2010 Olympic roster, but unlike Lacquette, Larocque was determined to rejoin the Bulldogs despite having missed the first part of the season. Larocque only played 19 games that season for UMD -- but was critical in helping UMD to its fifth NCAA title (and her second). UMD spent the entire 2009-10 season without forward Haley Irwin (Canada), and Swedish Olympians Elin Holmlov, Kim Martin and Pernilla Winberg. UMD also lost Finnish Olympians Saara Touminen and Mariia Posa for 10 games that February, who were crucial parts of Finland's Bronze medal upset.
Given her position, Rooney is arguably one of the biggest losses to centralize for the Bulldogs, considering how difficult it is to replace a goaltender four months before the season starts. Rooney's May announcement followed an incredible sophomore season. An All-WCHA Third Team selection last season for the Bulldogs, Rooney earned a bevy of league honors over the regular season, including the WCHA Defensive Player of the Month for November and March, in addition to four WCHA Defensive Player of the Week honors. Rooney played the most minutes in the nation this past season, registering 2250:38 minutes for an NCAA-best 98.6% of the Bulldogs goaltending workload. Rooney finished fourth in the NCAA and second in the WCHA with a .942 saves percentage, and the 1013 saves she posted season ranked second in the nation, as well as second-most in a single season by a Bulldog netminder. She was also named the WCHA Final Face-Off's Most Outstanding Player after making a tournament record 112 saves in two games.
Rooney is one of three goaltenders who will represent the U.S. in PyeongChang, South Korea, and is the second-youngest player on the squad. She is also only one of two players on the squad that still has NCAA eligibility remaining.
An Olympic Powerhouse
As a program, UMD has never had fewer than nine current or former players skating in the Olympics since the 2002 Olympics. In the six Winter Olympic Games that followed the inception of the Bulldog program, UMD has averaged 11.8 current or former players on Olympic rosters, with a program-high of 16 in 2006 and a whopping 15 in 2010. The 2018 Winter Olympics have once again followed that UMD script, with nine current and former players and one former player as a coach making appearances in PyeongChang, making it literally impossible to turn on any game in the preliminary rounds and not see a player or coach representing the Bulldogs.
In addition to Rooney, the U.S. Olympic Team will debut All-American Morin on the backline. It will also mark the first time that two UMD players have suited up for the U.S. side in the Olympics. Morin, a product of Minnetonka, Minn., played a portion of the 2017-18 season with MODO Hockey of the Swedish Women's Hockey League and was leading the team's defense in scoring when she left to centralize in late November. In her first post-NCAA season Morin had been dominating the SDHL. Through her first 21 games with MODO, Morin had 32 points (10g, 22a) and was a +40 before joining the national team.
Like Rooney, Morin is coming off the best collegiate season of her career, respectively. Morin graduated from UMD in May of 2017, and was the 2017 Western Collegiate Hockey Association Defensive Player of the Year. The blueliner left the Bulldogs as its seventh-highest scoring defenseman with 19 goals and 51 assists for 70 points in 147 games. Morin's 19 goals ranks her fifth among all UMD blueliners and she sits sixth all-time with 51 assists. Morin was also named a 2017 WCHA Scholar Athlete last season.
Switzerland's Stalder -- who won a bronze medal in 2014 -- was a huge part of UMD's national resurgence during the 2016-17 season. The All-American and WCHA Player of the Year, as well as WCHA Student Athlete of the Year, is making her second appearance in the Olympic games. Sweden's Lindh, in her second Olympic games, forfeited her senior year at UMD to make the Swedish team, and rounds out the four UMD players who were part of the 2016-17 NCAA Tournament Team.
"It's pretty amazing to think I got the opportunity to play with so many players who are now currently at the Olympics," said current UMD senior defenseman Jessica Healey. "That's something I love most about UMD, the people I have met and the fact that they are from all around the world. Not many people can say they know someone from a variety of teams at the Olympics. It's been fun following their hockey journey and I am excited to watch all of my former teammates in the Olympics this year."
Finland goaltender Suonpaa, like Rooney and Morin, will make her first Olympic squad. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Sweden's Winberg, who will skate in her fourth Olympic games -- the sixth-ever former Bulldog to have appeared in four Winter Olympic Games. Winberg owns a silver medal from the 2006 Turin Olympics in which, as the team's youngest member at 16, she scored the shootout-winning goal in Sweden's huge upset of the U.S. in the semi-final game.
"The Olympics is the biggest thing you can ever experience in women's hockey," said Winberg. "We succeeded there and it was crazy and the best thing I've ever experienced in hockey. That feeling was unreal. That's why I keep playing because I want to reach that goal again."
Stalder and Winberg aren't the only returning UMD Olympians that own medals, however. Forward Irwin owns two gold medals with Canada (2010, 2014), while Larocque earned her first gold medal in 2014 -- four years after being the last player cut from the 2010 Canadian Olympic Team. Irwin and Larocque were each members of the 2008 UMD NCAA championship team, and as previously mentioned above, two-time All-American Larocque also won an NCAA title with the Bulldogs in 2010.
Irwin was a senior for the Bulldogs in 2011-12 when Lacquette was a freshman at UMD, and Irwin, along with Larocque, will once again play the role as the elder statesmen in Lacquette's Olympic debut. Lacquette will make her first appearance for Canada in the Olympics after also coming up just short after centralization in 2013. A USCHO Third Team All-American with the Bulldogs, the native of Mallard, Manitoba played three seasons with UMD (2011-12, 2012-13 and 2014-15). It will also mark the second time in Olympics history that UMD has had three Canadian Olympians on one team -- in 2014, Canada had Irwin, Larocque and four-time gold medalist Caroline Ouellette repping the Bulldogs program.
What makes UMD so unique is that it's Olympians have literally come from all over the world. In that heralded group of 33 UMD Winter Olympians, former or current Bulldogs have represented an impressive total of seven different countries. In addition to the U.S. (3), Canada (4), Sweden (8), Finland (10) and Switzerland (2), UMD has had three Olympians from Russia and three from Germany.
As UMD puts the wrap on the regular season at AMSOIL this weekend against the No. 2 University of Wisconsin, the Bulldogs will still have an Olympic connection not skating in Pyeongchang. Senior defenseman convert Michelle Lowenhielm was a 2014 Olympian for Sweden. Lowenhielm's decision to play her final collegiate season at UMD without Olympic interruptions says one more thing about the program that remains glaringly obvious — the Bulldogs Olympic history is more than alive and well — its flourishing everywhere.
**Follow all of UMD's Olympians daily on www.umdbulldogs.com.
