Dan Hickling

Time flies. Or maybe one’s sense of it changes with age. So it is with women’s hockey. The fight to bring the sport under the NCAA umbrella is still fresh in mind, but it’s been 10 years since that battle was won. And now we’re about to witness women’s hockey make its fourth appearance in … Read more

Up in Orono, you use your snow tires for most of the hockey season because traction is always such a problem. Or at least it has been over the years for the UMaine women’s team. The Black Bears have been hard pressed to make the WHEA playoffs throughout their previous seven years in the league, … Read more

It seems to be the Golden Age of the young goalie. You’ve got Minnesota freshman Noora Raty, to whom every incoming puck must seem like a beach ball, because she’s stopping virtually every last one of them. And you’ve got sophomore Hillary Pattenden, whose parsimonious netminding (that means she’s really stingy) is a big reason … Read more

It’s not often that a spirited, high-octane hockey tilt leaves everybody feeling groovy (if not warm and fuzzy). That’s one thing that made Sunday’s exhibition featuring the U.S. National Team and a squad of WHEA All-Stars, staged at UNH, stand out: there were no bad guys. Only good guys. Which gave the vocal Whittemore Center … Read more

Ragging the puck while waiting for the Qwest Tour to hit the Granite State … Ten Years of Title-hunting Taking note that Minnesota-Duluth will be celebrating its 10th anniversary in womens’ hockey this weekend – “A Decade of Dominance” – when Minnesota State hits the Iron Range. Talk about an illustrious program. What Shannon Miller … Read more

When you head west and pull off one big upset, it may be dismissed as a fluke. However, when you pull off a second such stunner, you begin to gain a reputation as a giant-killer … which is how the hockey world can now regard Robert Morris. Last weekend, the Colonials motored out to Madison … Read more

Used to play “I spy with my wandering eye” with my kids, when both they (all six of them) and I were a lot younger. Found myself doing so again this week as I perused the D-I landscape. What Caught my Eye: WCHA Da Badgers. Just when you think you’ve got Wisconsin figured out, the … Read more

Don’t look now, but … What’s up with the CHA, anyway? Syracuse is suddenly respectable. Wayne State is, as we all know, still unpredictable. And Mercyhurst, is, well, still the top-ranked team in the land. Let’s start with the Orange. The second-year program appears to be making great strides under head coach Paul Flanagan. Syracuse … Read more

All the snakelike turns that this hockey season has taken, all the regular season upsets, all the walk-ons who earned their letters (and maybe even scholarships), all the wrenched knees and bruised feelings, all the sacrifices … all of it led to this weekend. Frozen Four weekend. A few more days and one team, one … Read more

For all the talk of parity, and the wide-open Women’s Frozen Four championship possibilities presented to any of two dozen Division-I programs, five furious months of hockey have proven this much. The past and present are pretty much the same. In the past year, we seen a change in regimes (good), and a change in … Read more

Women have been playing college hockey in Mankato for a dozen years but they had never once won a playoff game. That is until last week. And since the Mavericks of Minnesota State hadn’t won once, they certainly hadn’t won any playoff series. That is until last weekend, when the Mavs, seeded No. 5, bounced … Read more

A note to anyone reading this. This is the annual column where the word “I” will be used. Sparingly to be sure, but used none the less. I’m an old married guy (20-plus years of connubial bliss) and never experienced the pleasures (or is that pressures) of speed dating. Yet I feel as though I … Read more

Playoff bound though it is, as it heads into the final weekend of the WCHA regular season, St. Cloud State isn’t going anywhere. They ain’t movin’ up and they ain’t movin’ down. They are staying right there in fourth place behind that trio of juggernauts, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Duluth. “I keep telling our kids,” said … Read more

If two years constitutes a tradition, then the ECACHL has inured itself in a fine one with it’s Pink at the Rink program. The annual initiative, held in consort with the American Cancer Society, will visit ECAC venues at Cornell and Yale during games this weekend. It’s purpose is to raise funds for cancer research, … Read more

The venerable Houston Field House is undergoing an extensive facelift designed to make it one of the most attractive venues in the ECACHL. Meanwhile, it seems that one of the old rink’s prime tenants, the RPI women, have been testing the new elevators prematurely. How else could one explain the Engineers’ up and down fortunes … Read more

While the men’s side of College Hockey America may be gasping its last breath, the women’s half of the league has never been healthier. A sign of this will be on display this weekend at the Mercyhurst Ice Center, where the No. 5 Lakers will host No. 10 Wayne State in a two-game showdown. Mercyhurst … Read more

All season long, teams have been racking their brains in search of a sure-fire way of beating Wisconsin. Leave it to Minnesota-Duluth to come up with a fool-proof plan: don’t do anything different. The defending national champion Bulldogs worked that method to near-perfection last week, when they swept their two-game set with the Badgers, 4-0 … Read more

The month of January is named after “Janus”, the Roman god of doors, whose two faces were said to be able to see both forward and backward. What the heck does this have to do with women’s hockey, you ask? Nothing, really, except that the first column of the new year is a convenient place … Read more