Laker Fan Hockey: 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):