Seven months removed from returning the University of Minnesota Duluth women's hockey program back to a NCAA championship game, the 2022-23 Bulldogs will hit the road this weekend for their first non-conference opening series action since 2019. UMD will face New England Women's Hockey Alliance member Long Island University on Saturday and Sunday at the Northwell Health Ice Center in East Meadow, N.Y. Both games are set to drop the puck at 6:45 p.m. CT.
The series, which will jump start the season for both sides, is the first-ever meeting between the two programs and UMD's first action against a NEWHA member. The Bulldogs and Sharks played just one common opponent last season -- Penn State University, who defeated UMD early in the season on Nov. 26 in Washington, D.C. 2-3, and who swept LIU in two games at home in mid-February by scores of 0-10 and 0-2.
The road trip will be a long one for the Bulldogs, who will stay out east the following week to face St. Lawrence University and Penn State in Canton, N.Y. on Sept. 29-30.
SEASON PREVIEW:
Last March, the UMD finished NCAA championship runner-ups, having played its way into its first NCAA title game in over a decade. But after back-to-back NCAA Frozen appearances. the arguably former underdogs will begin the 2022-23 season anything but under the radar.
UMD will return 17 players that helped skate it into the title tilt, and a whopping 12 of the returning Bulldogs now have two consecutive NCAA Frozen Fours under their belts. That postseason experience, with the addition of the return of a gold medalist Ashton Bell, will embolden an already incredibly strong UMD squad that will not only look to return to the NCAA tournament for a third consecutive season, but properly host the 2023 NCAA Frozen Four that will be held at AMSOIL Arena next March.
DEFINITELY DEFENSIVE: While the Bulldogs will return plenty of offensive firepower, there is no question that its defensive core, including two Olympic-quality goaltenders, will be the early storyline. UMD returns the services of 2021 All-American Emma Soderberg, who finished off last season as an NCAA Frozen Four All-Tournament selection after the senior overtook the NCAA record books for saves in a single NCAA Tournament (146).
Fresh off another impressive performance at the World Championships two weeks ago with Sweden, the 2022 Winter Olympian returns to the Bulldogs for a fifth-year -- instantly bolstering UMD between the pipes and ready to take aim at the Bulldogs career record books. Soderberg is not the only Olympic goaltender that will hit the ice for UMD -- Blanka Skodova, a fifth-year senior transfer from the University of Vermont, became a world bronze medalist with the Czech Republic last month -- just months after earning a roster spot on the 2022 Czech Republic Olympic Team.
The literally golden return of Bell -- who won both an Olympic gold medal, as well as a World Championship medal just months apart with Canada this year -- has come with all the fanfare Bell deserves. The 2021 WCHA Defenseman of the Year left UMD for the Canadian National Team last season after one of the most dominant blueline seasons for a Bulldog defenseman in over a decade. A 2020-21 CCM/AHCA Second Team All-American, as well as a USCHO First Team All-American, Bell finished the 2020-21 season the seventh-highest scoring defenseman in the nation and second highest in the WCHA with 14 points on four goals and 10 assists. Almost as important as Bell's return to the backline will be now graduate student senior Maggie Flaherty, who was in the midst of a successful year before suffering a season-ending injury in UMD's 25th game. Flaherty's +29 plus/minus rating last season was highlighted with a massive game-winning goal against Minnesota, and the immediate impact of the return of Bell and Flaherty that made a title run without them should make UMD fans think big things could be on the horizon.
Junior Nina Jobst-Smith, with a recent championship appearance with Germany on her resume, will certainly look to improve on her nine assists, plus/minus of +19 and 1.39 shots per game average from a season ago, Add in the experience of Taylor Stewart on the backline, UMD's third senior on the backline, and fourth player at least a junior or older, and the Bulldogs no question look seasoned and experienced in the back.
OUTSTANDING OFFENSE: UMD's offense attracted most of the attention in 2021-22, and the Bulldogs will again return some of that firepower.
Gabbie Hughes enters her fifth season as one of the most feared forwards in all of the NCAA after she became just one of three players in NCAA Division I women's hockey history to be named both a Patty Kazmaier Top-3 Finalist and a Hockey Humanitarian Finalist. A 2021-22 CCM/AHCA First Team All-American, as well as an All-WCHA First Team selection, Hughes scored four goals in the 2022 NCAA Tournament to tie a program record, and compiled a career-best 59 points on 22 goals and 37 assists, all while leading the NCAA in points per game for more than half of the season.
Along with Hughes, Naomi Rogge returns for her fifth season just seven points shy of the UMD 100 career point mark. Rogge was UMD's fourth-leading scorer in 2021-22, recording 20 goals and 15 assists in a career-best season and bookend the year with a NCAA Frozen Four All-Tournament Team nod after sniping UMD into the championship tilt with the game-winner in double-overtime.
In fact, UMD has a plethora of fifth-year senior forwards set to impact its offense, including senior captain Kylie Hanley, Taylor Anderson and Anneke Linser. They will help pace the breakout sophomore season of now junior Clara Van Wieren, who had nine goals (including three game-winners) and 23 assists for 28 points in 40 games. Junior Mannon McMahon will also look to improve on her career-best season from a year ago of 19 points (4g, 15a).
The bottom line for the Bulldogs is that while college hockey's biggest stage is set to return to Duluth in March, UMD now has two back-to-back seasons of experience in not only getting on that stage but thriving on it. It's a long season ahead, but if the Bulldogs have proven anything with the returning core they have, they are more than ready for it.
ADDTIONAL NOTES:
ALL THE ALL-AMERICANS: For the first time in program history, the Bulldogs are returning three All-Americans to their roster. An impressive feat, especially considering UMD has had a total of 26 All-Americans -- including 15 First Team selections.
Those returners are 2021-22 CCM/AHCA First Team All-American Gabbie Hughes, 2020-21 CCM/AHCA Second Team All-American, as well as a USCHO First Team All-American Ashton Bell and Emma Soderberg, who was both a USCHO Second Team All-American and a 2020-21 CCM/AHCA Women's University Division Ice Hockey All-American.
The trio, all seniors in their Covid extra season of eligibilty, last all hit the ice together in the 2021 NCAA Frozen Four semifinal
WATCH PARTY: Super senior Naomi Rogge will start the season with 93 career points (52g, 41a), just seven shy of the UMD 100-point club.
Ashton Bell is right behind Rogge on the career climb. The converted defenseman has 86 career points (31g, 55a) and 32 of them have come from the blueline.
Bell's 15 goals as a defenseman rank her 10th all-time among UMD blueliners, a numner that is sure to rise, while Maggie Flaherty begins the year with 44 assists, also the tenth-most among Bulldog defensemen in a career.
Gabbie Hughes, already the eighth-highest point getter in UMD history (71-97=168), will look to climb in career goals, where she sits two out of the 10th slot with 71and assists, where she is already iin eighth with 97.
Hughes also begins the seaon with the second highest career points per game average in all of the NCAA with a 1.32 ppg.
POWERED PLAY: UMD ranked fourth in the NCAA and second in the WCHA in power play percentage last season with a 25.6 conversion rate. Luckily for the Bulldogs, no one has had more power play goals over the past five seasons combined than Ashton Bell, who returns with 16 career power play tallies. Over that same span, Naomi Rogge has posted 12, including a career-best seven in 2021. Bell has posted seven power play goals in a season twice -- in both 2019 and 2017. With those seven power play goal seasons, Bell and Rogge have netted more scores with the skater advantage than any other Bulldogs since the 2010-11 season, respectively. (Brienna Gillanders had nine that season, while Audrey Cournoyer netted seven.)
THAT WINNING FEELING: With 27 wins last season, the Bulldogs earned the most wins in a season of the Maura Crowell era. Crowell ran up 25 wins in 2016-17, one of Crowell's three NCAA Tournament appearances.
BULLDOGS BEGIN SEASON RANKED FIFTH NATIONALLY: For a second-straight season, UMD begins the season ranked fifth in the latest DCU/USCHO national poll.
The Bulldogs, who finished 27-12-1 last year, including 3-1 in the NCAA Tournament, earned 218 points to land them in fifth. Northeastern University -- the very team the Bulldogs knocked out of the NCAA Frozen Four in March, finished in fourth with 241 points. Three WCHA teams finished in the top-three, including top-ranked and defending national champion Ohio State University, who UMD met in the title tilt. Three of the top-five all made NCAA Frozen Four appearances in 2022.
WCHA PRESEASON POLL: NCAA champion game runner-ups just last March, the Bulldogs were chosen to finish fourth in the WCHA Preseason Coaches Poll, earning 31 points. Despite not making the NCAA Tournament a season ago, the University of Minnesota was picked to finish first with 44 points, while national champion Ohio State University was selected second with 43.
