St. Louis is Next Stop on the PWHPA Secret Dream Gap Tour

 On Sunday and Monday of this week the PWHPA will have a Dream Gap Tour stop in St. Louis. Great news is that Sunday will be streamed, and Monday will be properly broadcast on NBCSN.

I'll watch Monday night's game for sure. I'm curious to see what the level of play is. The teams are USWNT heavy, and with World's less than a month away staying healthy needs to be of utmost priority for the players, but they still need to be ready to go and not picking up bad habits by holding back. 

The teams are light on defenders, four on one roster and five on the other. Particularly in penalty killing scenarios (especially if defender is in the box), this is pretty light. I was curious if the rosters for D had changed at all compared to the last Secret Dream Gap Tour stop, since I had heard Kacey Bellamy was added to the Women's Sports Foundation team roster. However, when I looked at the rosters on the PWHPA site, they were the same as they'd been presented for previous showcases. So I'm sure Bellamy will be added, but not sure of any other changes. 

So as far as defense, here's what we are looking at (4 and 6 now):

Women's Sports Foundation: Jincy Dunne, Megan Keller, Codie Cross, Jacquie Greco, Kali Flanagan, Kacey Bellamy

adidas: Demi Crossman, Savannah Harmon, Margo Lund, Lee Stecklein

...ha. Effing Covid, I just went to twitter to confirm Bellamy is on WSF team and there's a postponement notice posted just now on PW's twitter. I'm sure the mature response from me is platitudes about health and safety and YES, 100%. But also....this really sucks. What a brutal year it's been. Women's games are rare events at the highest level. Even rarer that they get on tv. Even rarer still in Covid times. Post graduate players have not played a tournament since 2019. I won't believe that Worlds is real until the Championship is handed out.

But in the spirit of holding onto optimism, I underlined the World Championship rostered defenders above. In addition to the underlined above, the US will take Caroline Harvey, Cayla Barnes, Megan Bozek and Natalie Buchbinder, for a total of 8 defenders. Fingers crossed the tourney happens.

PWHPA to be broadcast on NHL Network and Sportsnet

The PWHPA announced today that their Sunday game at Madison Square Garden will be broadcast on NHL Network and Sportsnet. This is great news, and also my cue to subscribe to NHL Network again. I finally let it lapse last March, when the World Championships were cancelled, and it was apparent there would be no women's hockey for a while. The NHL Network has broadcast several women's games the past few years, and hopefully will expand on this in the future. Seeing a PW game on the slate is a great sign.

With today's announcement we are now on the eve of a lot of great hockey which will be broadcast. PW will be broadcast this weekend (Feb 28) as mentioned above. Next weekend when they do a showcase in Chicago, they will be on NBC Sportsnet. That one will be history making, as it's the first time they will be broadcast on Network tv in the US.

College hockey conference tourneys start this weekend and wrap up next weekend, and of course college hockey all has pretty decent streams. This leads us right into the National Championship, a two weekend tourney, the 2nd of which will (I assume) be broadcast on Big Ten Network as in years past. And THEN, Worlds. So we've got a good stretch here on tv, after some barren times.

Last February the Rivalry Series wrapped up in Anaheim at Honda Center in front of a history making crowd. Those darn Americans won in OT AGAIN, and while I love the drama of the rivalry, I'm always looking for my Canadian girls to win against America. But February 2020, that's a long time ago. Can't wait to watch on Sunday.

The rosters are mostly American players, or at the very least, players who are training in the US. Covid travel complications of course. It's Minnesota's Hub vs New Hampshire's Hub. Rosters are on the PW website, but I think the Minnesota roster has more offensive fire power for sure. Cameranesi, Knight, Brandt, Pankowski and Roque on Minnesota have that roster looking strong. Minnesota goalies are both Olympians - Rooney and Hensley. Total of 17 on the roster, 15 skaters.

Over on New Hampshire, well their roster is also amazing, but I don't think it matches Minnesota in scoring power. They also have 17 on the roster, 15 skaters. The real excitement over there is their defenders. Jincy Dunne graduated from Ohio State just last year, and on her last collegiate play of her career sprung an Ohio State forward on a rush in OT that win them their first ever WCHA Tourney Championship. I've always wanted to see Dunne on the ice with Olympians and looking at who she'll have to defend against in the Minnesota PW squad should give us a great look. Luckily she'll also have Megan Keller on her team to defend against Minnesota. New Hampshire has Alex Cavallini in net as well as Katie Burt. 

So Burt is the only non Olympian goalie in this mix. She's the young kid trying to oust a Hensley or a Cavallini I suppose, which there are no guarantees of, plus Aerin Frankel in college is trying to make that USA squad too, and Frankel is absolutely crushing it, recently posting 6 consecutive shutouts. So Burt is going to need some playing time. The question is if the Sunday night game is to be televised, are they going to share time for the goalies, or treat like a real game. My guess is the Saturday night, they give some playing time to all four goalies, but come Sunday, unless something wild happens in Saturday's game, we'll see Rooney vs Cavallini. Rooney played in the 2018 Olympic gold medal game of course, and Cavallini played most of the 2019 Worlds and also looked amazing, helping USA win gold. 

All of this PW stuff is against the backdrop of their pursuit of a viable league, but we also know every time these athletes step on the ice it's a tryout for their respective National Teams. With so few games for some of these women in the past almost two years now I don't really know what to expect in terms of sustained crispness and cohesion especially at 5 on 5. It will be good hockey I have no doubt, but it won't be near Olympic level I don't think. Nonetheless, the PW on NHL Network and Sportsnet will be passionate, quality hockey, and a welcome sight to women's hockey fans.