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CWHL

Behind the Glass: Speed and Skill

Some of the NWHL and CWHL’s brightest put on a show at the NHL’s All-Star Skills Competition in San Jose

It’s time for another installment of Behind the Glass — the Ice Garden’s weekly column collecting stories, stats, trends, and observations from the world of professional women’s hockey.

  • Kendall Coyne Schofield put on a show and made history at the 2019 NHL All-Star Skills Competition in San Jose on Jan. 25./
  • As it turns out, Brianna Decker finished second in the premier passing drill with a time between 1:12 and 1:13 (Leon Draisaitl finished with 1:09.088). Originally, it was believed that she finished with a time of 1:06. Regardless of which time it is, she still smoked Sebastian Aho, Ryan O’Reilly, Keith Yandle, Thomas Chabot, and Roman Josi. She also handily beat the times that Nikita Kucherov and Drew Doughty had in the 2018 Skills Competition.
  • Per espnW, the Minnesota Whitecaps are the first NWHL team to turn a profit. The Whitecaps sold out all of their home games this season and reportedly had significant merchandise sales./
  • The Buffalo Beauts have now won four games in a row and are 6-1 in their last seven games. In that span, they have out-scored the opposition by a margin of 27-7. The Beauts have also won five straight games at the HarborCenter.
  • Maddie Elia had herself a game against the Boston Pride last Saturday. She put 12 shots on net, which is an NWHL record according to @QuarkyHockey. Elia now has 11 goals in 12 games to lead the NWHL in goal scoring. She’s also just two goals away from tying Kelley Steadman’s franchise record for goals in a single season (stick taps to @MattFPxP for this one).
  • Katie Burt will replace Meeri Räisänen in the 2019 NWHL All-Star Weekend in Nashville. Räisänen is unable to participate because she’s joining Team Finland for the Euro Hockey Tour finale. With Burt attending, the Pride have seven All-Stars.
  • The Markham Thunder put on a clinic in shot-blocking in the dying seconds of their 2-1 victory over Les Canadiennes on Jan. 26. Laura Stacey, Megan Bozek, and Kristen Richards each blocked a Marie-Philip Poulin slap shot to preserve Markham’s lead and win the game. If you’re looking for your play of the week, look no further./
  • The aforementioned game was the first regulation loss for Les Canadiennes de Montréal their first regulation loss since Nov. 25. As Jared Book pointed out on Twitter, it was also Montréal’s third-straight road loss in North America. Montréal snapped that streak on Sunday, when they defeated Markham by a score of 6-2.
  • Poulin’s amazing 10-game goal-scoring streak was snapped on Saturday. In that span, Poulin scored 14 goals and notched eight assists for Les Canadiennes.
  • Victoria Bach is riding a seven-game point scoring streak that began on Dec. 9. She has seven goals and six assists in her last seven games.
  • Unfortunately, it looks like the Toronto Furies will be without defender Emma Greco for quite some time. She’s out with a collarbone injury./
  • We are now at three coaching changes in the CWHL this season. Bob Deraney has stepped down as the head coach of the Shenzhen KRS Vanke Rays and will be focusing on player development in North America for KRS. Mike LaZazzera, formerly an assistant under Deraney, will finish the season as Shenzhen’s interim head coach.
  • With her goal against the Furies on Tuesday night, Alex Carpenter is now just two goals behind Poulin for the league lead. Carpenter has 16 goals in 23 games this year.
  • According to the CWHL’s official stats page, three Rays players have played in 23 games this season without taking a minor penalty: Carpenter, Xin Fang, and Minghui Kong.
  • During an interview on the Tim & Sid show, Cassie Campbell-Pascal claimed that there was one league and one commissioner standing in the way of a merger between the NWHL and the CWHL (that section of the interview begins around the 4:00 mark in the video below)./
  • According to a report, Linköping HC has signed Canadian forward Brooke Stacey. Stacey, 22, is an alumna of the University of Maine where she scored 30 points in 36 games last year as a senior. Earlier this season, Linköping lost star forward Lara Stalder for the rest of the season with a shoulder injury.
  • Luleå Hockey/MSSK clinched first place in the SDHL for the fourth year in a row. They went 10-1-0 in the month of January, losing only to HV71 by a score of 3-2 on Jan. 19.
  • It actually happened. On Jan. 27, SK Sverdlovsk Oblast defeated SKIF Nizhny Novgorod by a score of 2-1 for their first win in four years of existence. Alexandra Nuryuyeva, 22, scored SKSO’s first game-winning goal./
  • Czech defender Aneta Tejralova leads all ZhHL defenders in goals this season with 12 in her first 33 games. She leads Agidel Ufa’s Anna Shibanova by three goals. Tejralova and Svetlana Prokopenko share the team lead on Dynamo for points (26)./

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