So, stop me if you’ve heard this before:
A team after losing lots of marquis talent due to outside circumstances comes into a new professional season and stuns everybody by playing much better than most
prognostication expected.
I know, this is a really
hard mindset for 2025 Boston hockey fans to get into, but I need you to try and inhabit a new headspace here.Few believed in the Fleet…
Boston was one of two teams who got absolutely blown to smithereens by the inclusion of Seattle and Vancouver; namely a number of their marquis talents find themselves now wearing some variant of blue in the Pacific Standard Timezone. While they got to keep Muller, Frankel, and Tapani, they lost Hilary Knight, Sydney Bard, Emily Brown and Hannah Bilka, and were coming off of a truly frustrating season where it felt like they were continuously wasting efforts of goaltending wonder weapon Aerin Frankel, who kept them deep in games they often had no business winning to begin with.
Consistently, the prognostication of this team was looking like a rebuilding squad. THN had them last, DailyFaceoff’s roundtable discussion of the league found them no higher than 5th, The Ice Garden saw them as a team just barely out of it (though did recognize this is a tough league and so expected them to stay in the race for awhile)
…and the Fleet have made them pay for it, at least early on.
From jump, the Fleet made a statement by taking the Montreal Victoire, a team with a great many of Team Canada’s bigger names on it, one that should be raring to go and crush the league for their repeated inabilities to get out of the 1st round…and shut them right out.
Since the beginning of the season, no team has been harder to score on, no team has been harder to pry the puck off of, and nobody has been quite so hard to beat as the Boston Fleet.
Quite early on, it’s clear the loss of Hilary Knight gave a couple of players the go-ahead to try and run an offense for themselves, and it’s paid dividends for Susanna Tapani, who leads the team in points with 3 in 3 games; 2 goals and an assist. It’s also allowed rookie players like Abby Newhook to shine, as she’s right next to Tapani in goals.
But of course, the real rock for the Fleet, the one they can always hide behind if things get squirrelly, is Aerin Frankel. Frankel once again is the pride of the league with a 0.986 SV%, and having only let a single puck past her in 70 shots. It is however, a much more team oriented effort this year, as among the starters for the PWHL, Frankel has gone from seeing some of the most pucks thrown at her, to 2nd least; a defensive effort that’s creating a positive feedback loop for the team as they now largely manage their best player correctly, and their best player can reward them with a chance to stay in every game.
With all that out of the way, The Fleet play Minnesota today
…so let’s watch a little, shall we? See if we can get to 4-0 before the olympic team camps!
