Canada USA U22 Series: Where They're From and Where They Play

Canada and the USA are two thirds through their women's hockey U22 summer series, taking place in Calgary this year. At the U22 level, USA leads the series two games to none, with 4-1 and 3-1 wins (USA has empty net goals in each game). At the U18 level, the series is tied at one. The final games will be played on Sunday, and can be streamed on Hockeytv.com (login required, but no subscription required).

For NCAA fans, this is a chance to watch some of the best NCAA players play each other. The U22 team is essentially the development team, one level below the senior team that represents these countries in World Championships, the Four Nations and the Olympics.

It's the middle of summer, and the teams get assembled after a one week camp, so the players are not at peak season form, but it's still impressive, highly skilled hockey to watch. Most interesting is observing how players who are dominant at the NCAA level can get neutralized a bit, when you take the best Canadian and American players of the approximately 70 NCAA and USports teams, and pare it down to two teams. Because of the parity in talent, there are fewer high quality scoring chances created at this level, so the ability to score on the few chances created is invaluable.

Looking at the rosters is fun, just to give myself an idea of who to watch for in the upcoming NCAA season, as 40 of the 44 players will be playing NCAA next year. I posted the Canada and USA rosters below separately, sorted by home province/state. Then I posted the rosters combined, sorted by conference and school.

Roster takeaways:

The US U22 roster includes two Olympians in Maddie Rooney and Cayla Barnes. Barnes is the rare athlete who played her first Olympics before using any NCAA eligibility; she will be a freshman at BC this year. Canada's youngest Olympic hockey player in 2018 was Emily Clark, already 22 thus not on the U22 roster, but returning to Wisconsin this fall. The province and state with the most U22 players are Ontario with 9 players, and Minnesota with 8. The school with the most U22 players is Wisconsin, with seven. By conference the biggest takeaway is that the WCHA, a 7 team conference, has an incredible 20 players in the U22 programs of Canada and USA. You can also see that a majority of the Canadian U22 roster plays in the ECAC and CHA; while a majority of US roster plays in the WCHA and Hockey East.

The US roster is coached by Joel Johnson, long time Associate Head Coach at Minnesota. Canada's team is coached by Nadine Muzerall, going into her third year of being Head Coach at Ohio State.

Canada U22 Roster (may need to click on the image to make it bigger):

 

USA U22 Roster:

 

Combined USA and Canada U22 rosters, sorted by conference, then school: 

 

CHA News

Here's an assortment of CHA news from this summer with a ton of links. We've got coaching changes, National Camp attendees, CW and NW news, schedules are out, and a feature on a recent Syracuse grad.

1- Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) Head Coach Scott McDonald steps down after 12 years and a 205-154-29 record. McDonald coached the team to a Division III National Championship in 2012, oversaw the team's transition to Division I and won two CHA Conference Tournaments in 2014 and 2015.

The CHA Tournament Championships were in large part due to the out of this world play of goaltender Ali Binnington, who made 62 and 44 stops in those double OT 2-1 tournament wins respectively. RIT was the recipient of the first ever CHA auto bid to the NCAA Tournament, in 2015.

More recently RIT has struggled, winning between 4 and 8 games in each of the last three seasons. One challenge facing the as yet unnamed new head coach is that RIT is not able to offer athletic scholarships because it is a Division III school that plays up to Division I in hockey, but switched to Division I too late to be grandfathered under the old rule which would allow scholarships. RIT, Union and the six Ivy schools with hockey are the only Division I programs not offering athletic scholarships to their players.

2- Mercyhurst hires Beth Hanrahan as assistant coach. Hanrahan replaces outgoing associate head coach Lou Goulet. Hanrahan is a 2015 graduate of Providence and played one year in the NWHL. She has assistant coaching experience at Shattuck Saint Mary's and comes to Mercyhurst from an assistant coaching position at Lindenwood. So, while Mercyhurst fills a coaching vacancy, CHA member Lindenwood now has a new vacancy.

3- Both the Canadian and American USA  hockey camps are happening right now for the U18 and U22 teams. CHA representatives in Canada include: Allie Munroe (Syracuse); Kirsten Welch, Jaycee Gebhard and Brittany Howard (Robert Morris); Alexa Vasko (Mercyhurst). On the USA side, Taylor Heising (Penn State) is a part of the U22 camp.

There are several CHA alums on the coaching staff, one of whom made news today. Candice Moxley, an alum of  the defunct Niagara University Purple Eagles, was named head coach of the Western Mustangs, a USports team in London, Ontario.

4- CHA alums are declaring for the CWHL draft, which take place August 26th. Alysha Burris (Syracuse), Brittany Howard (RMU), Natalie Fraser (RMU) and Elijah Milne-Price (RMU) have declared. Howard was featured as CWHL top prospect, and Pension Plan Puppets have a feature on Milne-Price.

5- Jess Jones (Mercyhurst '12) has returned to the CWHL after one year in the NWHL. She will play for the Markham Thunder. As a Mercyhurst Laker Jones amassed an incredible 154 points, the 7th most of any Laker all-time.

6- Emily Janiga (Mercyhurst '16) has returned to the NWHL after one year in the CWHL. She will play for her hometown Buffalo Beauts after playing for the Vanke Rays in China last year. As a Mercyhurst Laker Jania amassed an incredible 150 points, the 8th most of any Laker all-time. Janiga was interviewed on the Founding Four pod; her interview starts at about the 45 minute mark.

Other CHA alums that have signed with Buffalo Beauts (link to the very long NWHL free agent tracker) include Julia DiTonda and Taylor Accursi, who both played for Merchurst, as well as Nicole Hensley who played for Lindenwood.

7- Most of the CHA schedules are out:

Mercyhurst has a challenging non conference schedule once again. They will play Minnesota, Wisconsin, Bemidji, Ohio State, Colgate, Cornell, and Union. The schedule is similar to last year except instead of 4 games against SLU and RPI, Mercyhurst plays 3 games against Cornell and Union. The slate includes four NCAA Tournament teams.

Robert Morris' non conference schedule includes St. Lawrence, Clarkson, RPI, Colgate, Minnesota State University, Cornell, and Minnesota. This non conference schedule is more difficult than RMU's 2017-2018 schedule. It includes the 2018 National Champion and runner up, plus Minnesota who will be returning Olympians and was also an NCAA Tournament team. St.Lawrence and Cornell are typically strong teams hovering around the 10th spot in the nation or better.

Penn State's schedule is not yet released, but it includes no WCHA teams which means no Big Ten teams. That has to be a first for the program but is perhaps not surprising given Coach Kampersal's long ties to the ECAC. Known non-conference games include Colgate, Merrimack, RPI and Princeton. There are possibly 3 more non conference teams to add to that. Penn State had a tough schedule last year; thus far this year's looks a bit weaker. They are already a team on the rise with Kampersal, fans can expect their win total of to increase this year.

Syracuse's non conference schedule includes one game vs each of BC, Vermont, and RPI; and two game series vs Clarkson, Cornell, Wisconsin, Colgate, and Princeton. As part of the Vermont WindJammer Classic, Syracuse will also play one game versus either St. Lawrence or Minnesota. So, another tough non conference schedule that includes potentially 5 of the NCAA Tournament teams.

RIT's non conference schedule includes Holy Cross, St. Cloud, Union, RPI, Dartmouth, BU, and Brown. In that group, only Holy Cross had a wining record last year, although they played a mostly Division II schedule. Holy Cross joined Hockey East and will play a Division I schedule this year.

Lindenwood has not yet released their schedule although we know from the WCHA schedule it includes four games against St. Cloud,  and two games against Wisconsin.

8- Last but not least, here's a link to a Pucks and Recreation feature about Stephanie Grossi, a Syracuse graduate who plans to start med school in 2019. Grossi is the all time points leader for the 11 year old Syracuse program, with 117 points.