DULUTH — With nine fifth-year seniors, four players who just returned from the 2022 IIHF Women’s World Championship in Denmark, a returning Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award top-three finalist in Gabbie Hughes and an Olympic gold medalist from Canada in Ashton Bell, the 2021-22 national runners up from Minnesota Duluth should be one of the favorites to win the WCHA in 2022-23, right?
Not this year, and not in what is an extremely loaded WCHA this season. The league will feature eight Olympic medalists from the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing, scattered across five of the eight teams. The league is also stacked with notable fifth-year players, including the top three finalists for last year’s Patty Kaz.
“I think this is going to be one of the best years in all of college women’s hockey,” UMD coach Maura Crowell said Wednesday during a WCHA Media Day Zoom call with reporters. Her team was picked to finish fourth in the WCHA, and ranked fifth nationally. “Frankly, some of the rosters people have put together for this season are incredible and I think the fans are in for a real treat.”
“Challenging,” “formidable” and “daunting” were the words Bemidji State coach Jim Scanlan used to describe a league schedule this season where it is difficult to pinpoint who is the team to beat in the WCHA in 2022-23.
You’ll likely get a different answer, depending on who you ask.
Minnesota, the defending WCHA regular season champions, took the top spot in the coaches poll that was released this week. The Gophers also have nine fifth-year seniors on their roster — including former UMD defenseman Lizi Norton — three Olympic medalists from the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing and the reigning Patty Kazmaier winner in Taylor Heise.
Despite all that on the roster, the Gophers only received three out of eight first-place votes in the WCHA coaches poll this year, and they failed to pick up the No. 1 ranking in either of the national preseason polls released this week — coming in at No. 2 in the USCHO poll with two first-place votes and No. 3 in the USA Hockey poll, getting no first-place votes.
Echoing Crowell, Gophers coach Brad…
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