The Minnesota Golden Gophers Women’s hockey team kicks off their season on Thursday night when Boston College comes into Ridder Arena for a series to begin the year. Minnesota always heads into the season with
NCAA Championship aspirations, but could the 2025-26 season be the time for them to finally get past Ohio State and Wisconsin and claim the NCAA Championship at Penn State next March?
As we posted earlier, Minnesota loses 13 players off of their Frozen Four team from a season ago and brings in ten newcomers. But the Gophers went out and made a concerted effort to add offensive firepower in the portal this offseason. Sarah Paul was the nation’s fourh leading goal scorer a season ago for Princeton and now will wear the maroon and gold. Jamie Nelson played in the WCHA four four years with Minnesota State and knows the league well and how to create offense against tough teams. She’s now a Gopher. Add in Molly Jordan from BC who will step in on the Minnesota blue line and add another both-way defender and the Gophers got better.
Minnesota also has a number of freshmen who were ranked near the top 10 of the class of 2025. Expect instant impacts from Bella Fanale, Sienna D’Alessandro, Layla Hemp and Tereza Plosova as they have competed and thrived on the international stage against some of the best players in the world at their age group.
And oh yeah, Minnesota still had that Abbey Murphy woman. She’s kinda good.
How Do The Rest of The Country Think The Gophers Will Do?
Minnesota opened up ranked #3 in the nation in the preseason USCHO.com poll. Not surprisingly that’s where they have been most of the time in recent years, behind fellow WCHA foes Wisconsin and Ohio State who have combined for the last six NCAA titles. Minnesota was selected to finish in a tie for second in the Preseason WCHA Coaches poll with the Buckeyes. Wisconsin was the unanimous #1. Abbey Murphy was the lone Gopher to be named to the Preseason All-WCHA Team with two players each from Wisconsin and OSU, and Minnesota-Duluth star goalie Eve Gascon.
Unsurprisingly the odds on favorite is a three way battle between the Gophers, Buckeyes and Badgers for both WCHA and NCAA supremacy. Wisconsin comes off of their best season in school history and really only loses Patty Kazmaier Award Winner Casey O’Brien. They still return a ton of talent including Kirsten Simms, Laila Edwards and Caroline Harvey who finished second, third and fifth in NCAA scoring last season, respectively. The Badgers also have the Preseason pick for WCHA Freshman of the Year in Czech forward Adéla Šapovalivová who lit up the Women’s U-18 World Championshps in 2024.
Ohio State lost a few pieces from last year’s NCAA runner up team, but still brings back a pair of stars in F Joy Dunne and D Emma Peschel. They added a freshman from Sweden who should be amazing and added a Colgate transfer named Kaia Malachino who had 33 points in 35 games a season ago as well.
It again has all the hallmarks of a three-team race to the top. But what could screw up those plans?
So, uh…What about this whole Olympics Thing?
And there is the loaded question. What about this whole Olympics thing. Well, its going to be different than it ever has been. In prior seasons, team who would be expected to play for their countries in the Olympics usually centralized leading up to the games and playing together in a large training camp. Players would often take Olympic redshirt seasons and not compete at all with their collegiate squads. That’s out the window this year. None of the national teams are going to centralize. What they will do is have a series of week long camps, some international friendlies, and then of course play the actual Olympic games. The Women’s tournament at the Olympics kicks off on February 5th and finishes with the Bronze and Gold medal games on February 19th. The following weekend—February 20th and 21st is the final weekend of the regular season. So at absolute minimum the top teams will miss their Olympic players for probably the final four weeks of the regular season, and likely scattered weekends throughout the rest of the season. That’s going to make a huge difference not only for the teams like Minnesota and Wisconsin who could be missing up to 5+ of their top players for a month, but for the more borderline teams in the WCHA and the top teams out east who will NOT be missing as many players and will look to take advantage of the depleted rosters of the top teams during that stretch.
With things definitely up to change, here’s a quick look at the potential number of players on each of the main WCHA contenders who will miss time for National team duty:
Minnesota: 5 (Abbey Murphy, Josefin Bouveng, Nelli Laitinen, Chloe Primerano, Tereza Plosova
Wisconsin: 6 (Caroline Harvey, Lacy Eden, Laila Edwards, Kirsten Simms, Ava McNaughton, Adéla Šapovalivová)
Ohio State: 5 (Sanni Vanhanen, Hilda Svensson, Jenna Raunio, Mira Jungaker, Emma Peschel)
Minnesota-Duluth: 4 (Eve Gascon, Krista Parkonnen, Thea Johansson, Ida Karlsson)
The schedule takes no prisoners for the teams who will me missing plenty of talent either. Minnesota host Wisconsin and UMD, plays at Ohio State and has a home and home vs St. Thomas in those final four weeks. There is going to be a lot of pressure on the second tier of players on all these teams, and whoever can handle it best, and then have their stars return home and are able to immediately jump back into the lineup as the postseason starts will have the advantage. Of course that doesn’t even take into account any potential injuries as well.
At Least the Gophers Will Get Off to a Good Start….Right?
Well, hopefully. Minnesota has one of their stiffest schedules to open the season in recent memory. Besides hosting perennial power Boston College to open the season this weekend, Minnesota then flies out to Boston to take on the other Boston school in Boston University next weekend. The Terriers open up ranked #11 to start the season. Then it’s right into WCHA action with the Gophers first four conference series a home and home vs #13 St. Cloud State, a home series vs #2 Ohio State, a road trip to Duluth to face #6 UMD, nd then a road trip to Madison to face the top ranked Badgers. Oy. There are zero breaks in the schedule until November for this team. Will they be mentally up to the challenge?
So, What’s The Final Thought?
This Gopher team definitely has the ability to be really good yet again. They have two young goalies, but one who really proved herself last year in Hannah Clark. They have a very strong blue line and at minimum three full lines of scoring power when all accounted for. The biggest question will be with the tough start, will the freshmen get acclimated right away or will it take a bit of a ramp up that the Gophers really don’t have the luxury of having. Then, how will all of the teams, not just Minnesota fair when their players start leaving. The Gophers have a deep squad and can weather the loss of some of their players, but not having Abbey Murphy for over a month will hurt. There is no other way around it. Regular season titles will be much more meaning less this season. Your teams goal is to keep our team in the hunt and make sure you are safely in the NCAA field, and then let all your stars return and go for one last four week quest for a title. I think the Gophers can do that, but now it’s time to see it on the ice.
