The coaches left the locker room, but Caroline Peterson (East Falmouth, Mass.) wasn’t ready for the discussion to be over.
The Providence women’s hockey team had just lost to Northeastern, 4-1, on its home ice. It spotted the Huskies three goals before getting on the board with less than four minutes remaining in the second period.
It was only the team’s second loss of the season, and the competition was strong, as both programs entered the contest with identical 7-1 records. Still, the effort wasn’t up to the standards the players held themselves to, so Peterson, the captain, asked the player to come together and figure out what happened.
“She asked everyone to stay. I think we sat there for like 15 to 20 minutes, and we just talked. We just got everything out,” said assistant captain Lauren DeBlois (Lewiston, Maine). “We were getting frustrated. I think that’s what hurt us. We were sitting down, and everyone was speaking up and saying what they thought about the game, and after that, we were like, ‘All right. Tomorrow is a new day, and it’s going to be our day, and we just need to go out there and do what we need to do.’ ”
The following night in Boston, the teams played to a 2-2 tie. That result kickstarted a stretch where Providence went 8-2-1 in its next 11 games, including a 3-0 victory over Northeastern when the Huskies made another trip to Rhode Island.
DeBlois, graduate forward Sara Hjalmarsson and head coach Matt Kelly all pointed to that weekend against Northeastern as an inflection point of the season that saw the Friars rise to ninth in the final USCHO Division 1 Women’s Poll prior to the winter break (Dec. 12, 2022).
“We felt like our performance in those games was really good,” Hjalmarsson said. “I felt like our team felt like we could compete with Northeastern, who’s been, obviously, a top team in our league for a few years now. We knew where we were standing when we played them.”
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Providence began the year winning seven of its first eight games. After consecutive losses to the University of Connecticut in mid-November, the team won seven of its next eight games as well, including a 3-2 victory over No. 3 Quinnipiac. That victory, the last game before the winter break, was the team’s 16th of the season, matching its total from the entire previous season, one that Hjalmarsson said was not what anybody was satisfied with.
“Losing pretty early in playoffs, our expectations were a lot higher coming into this year,” she said. “It’s really just playing better than or doing better than we did last year, so I think we all just kind of came in with almost a revenge mindset.”
Kelly’s tenure as the team’s head coach has been a notable one. In his first year, the 2018-19 season, the team went 24-11-2, tying a program record for wins; he also took the team to the Hockey East semifinals for the first time since 2013. He followed that up with an 18-win season in 2019-20, 12 wins in the shortened 2020-21 season; and a 16-win season in 2021-22. In all four years, the team had a record above .500 and reached at least the Hockey East quarterfinals. In the 2021 season, Providence made its first appearance in the NCAA tournament since 2012 and earned its first trip to the Hockey East championship since 2005.
Despite all of that, Kelly had higher expectations coming into this season.
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“Going into this year, myself, my coaching staff, we were very optimistic. We had talks this could be the best team we’ve had since we’ve been here,” he said. “The kids we brought back for their fifth year, kids that have been around the program now for four years, this is their fifth year; they know the expectations. They know what we’re preaching and teaching. It’s good for them for our young kids to be like, ‘That’s how they’re going about their business daily, so that’s what I’ve got to do, too.’ … They’re tremendous role models, great leaders, and on the back end, having great goaltending come back is a big key in our game at any level.”
In addition to the extra year of experience all his players earned, Providence added several players through the transfer portal: junior forward Rachel Weiss, graduate student defender Ida Press, and graduate student forward Noemi Neubauerova. Neubauerova ranks second on the team in points with 25 and Weiss is tied for fifth with 19. Press has nine points and is fifth on the team in blocks with 25.
The Friars also have Hjalmarsson, who has a lighter load this year. Last season, the team had to share her with the Swedish National Team, playing in both the IIHF Women’s World Championship and the Beijing Olympics, where the team advanced to the quarterfinals before losing to Canada.
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Hjalmarsson said it was a huge honor to play for Sweden, and she felt the experience playing at the highest level against older players helped her coming back to Providence this year, but she also admitted the consistent travel — along with the time changes — while also keeping up with schoolwork was draining.
In 21 games in 2021-22, she scored five goals and added five assists. This year, she leads the team with 43 points on 24 goals and 19 assists.
“She’s super skilled, super talented, great vision, moves the puck really well, and you know, she’s in the scoring area. She can definitely pick corners, too,” said Kelly. “She’s a super-talented kid, and she’s played at the highest level in our game, so I think that brings so much confidence to her game, and, obviously so much experience to our locker room.”
The first two games coming back from break did not go as Providence had hoped, as PC suffered three-straight losses to the University of Vermont, 2-0, 4-1 and 3-0. The Friars finished the regular season going 4-2-3 in their final nine games.
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But it’s a resilient group, and that attitude is what took Providence into the Hockey East playoffs. It took down Maine, 5-2, on Saturday and looks to get revenge on Vermont Wednesday night to earn a spot in the championship game.
“Holding ourselves to that high standard, it’s what we’ve been doing all year, which, clearly, has been benefitting us,” DeBlois said. “I’m going to go back to that second Northeastern game. That’s the standard. That’s the game where we said, ‘This is it. That’s how we need to play every single game for the rest of year.’
“When we’re not playing well, we look at each other between periods and are like, ‘That was not it. Let’s figure it out real quickly and go out there get a few goals,’ and we’ve been doing that,” she added. “That Quinnipiac weekend, we played a really good game Friday but came up short. It shows our mental toughness. The next day we got the win. It goes to show how we respond to things.”
