1. Schwartz saga unites hockey world
Mandi Schwartz, a would-be senior forward for the Yale Bulldogs, is instead the face of acute myeloid leukemia awareness. She has been since no earlier than April, when she endured the first of three cancer relapses on the year, the other two occurring in August and most recently one week prior Christmas.
But amidst her morally incomprehensible seesaw battle, Schwartz has drawn vital, uplifting, and potentially revolutionary attention. The epicenter of her fight was at the New Haven campus, where in April, her team, along with the Yale football squad, hosted multiple drives to search for a matching bone marrow donor. And even before her first relapse, Schwartz was enlightening the local public to the merit of marrow registry through interviews with Connecticut television networks.
Since then, the New York Times and nhl.com, just to name two prominent media outlets, have each featured and updated Schwartz’s story more than once. Over the summer, the “Become Mandi’s Hero” Facebook page did not take long to brim over its maximum capacity of 5,000 members. Those who have visited that and/or associated websites have likely learned the finer points of both marrow and umbilical cord blood donation. The latter procedure would be Schwartz’s resort late in the summer when a sufficient marrow donor failed to surface.
Seattle, the primary site of her treatment, has embraced Schwartz to such an extent that she tossed the first pitch at an Aug. 7 Mariners’ game, symbolically cementing her grip on people’s hearts across the continent. Elsewhere, Yale hockey teammates Aleca Hughes and Samantha MacLean both garnered notoriety for leading their own fundraising events in and around their respective Massachusetts and Ontario homes.
And more recently, Yale field hockey player Lexy Adams noted that she had a marrow match for another cancer patient, a revelation and opportunity made possible by the campus donor drive the previous spring.
Schwartz will enter 2011 on the heels of yet another drawback, one that likely hits harder than its predecessors given the late summer breakthrough that gave her a new immune system and supposedly brought over the worst of the hurdles.
Her return to the Bulldogs’ bench for her final year of eligibility is uncertain as ever. But, as clear as a fresh sheet of ice, her ultimate battle will continue to pan out before a colossal and emotional home crowd.
2. Taking it outside
The cascade of clichés before and after the fact was predictable. The game itself was novel and a vital trailblazer for female pucksters.
One week into the year, the storied Hockey East programs of New Hampshire and Northeastern took women’s Division I hockey outdoors for the first time, staging Act I of the Frozen Fenway doubleheader at Boston’s antique ballpark.
Performing in front of a live audience of 6,889 and innumerable television viewers via NESN and the NHL Network, five different skaters logged a multi-point performance. Northeastern frosh Brittany Esposito –sporting the same surname and No. 7 jersey as a past Boston hockey hero for all Fenway onlookers to see- slugged home two goals, both assisted by senior co-captain Annie Hogan, to sculpt a 3-1 lead through two periods.
But within the final nine minutes of the closing frame, celestial Wildcat playmaker Courtney Birchard concocted a hat trick of helpers, morphing a 3-2 deficit into a 5-3 triumph. The final two goals were off the stick of New Hampshire’s own radiant rookie, Kristina Lavoie. UNH senior Micaela Long snagged a goal-assist value pack, inserting the equalizer and setting up the decider.
3. Big Red make big splash
Previously bereft of banners and without a winning season since 1997-98, Cornell University roared through the final two months of the ECAC pennant race, posting a 7-1-4 record and winning five straight to close out the regular season. On their follow-through, the Big Red swept Colgate in the best-of-three quarterfinal, nipped Rensselaer, 5-4, in the semis, and then bested Clarkson in overtime, 4-3 for the program’s first conference title and first NCAA tournament passport.
As if Doug Derraugh had not sufficiently enriched his application for Division I Coach of the Year, his eighth-seeded pupils proceeded to dismantle host Harvard, 6-2, and zap almighty Mercyhurst in yet another overtime bout, 3-2.
It took three bonus rounds for reality and the Minnesota-Duluth Bulldogs to catch up to Cornell, which fell a strike shy of the national title. But rather than retract, Derraugh’s pupils have since emboldened their position as the new regal bunch in a league traditionally governed by Harvard, Dartmouth, and St. Lawrence.
So far this season, Cornell is 13-1-0, its lone loss being a 4-3 OT falter against Mercyhurst. Goaltender Amanda Mazzotta is on pace for a triple crown with a nation-leading goals-against average (0.91), save percentage (.953), and winning percentage (.929). Meanwhile, her offensive mates have supplied a median of 4.36 goals per game, good for third in the nation behind Wisconsin and Mercyhurst. And they have stayed out of the box with only seven penalty minutes per night, tying them with Quinnipiac for the country’s best disciplinary record.
Consistently No. 2 in the national rankings from before their first face-off through Thanksgiving, the Big Red pole-vaulted over Wisconsin to claim the top slot Nov. 29. They have yet to abdicate.
4. Changing of the guard
While the current UNH Wildcats were whetting their blades for the aforementioned Frozen Fenway game, Jenn Wakefield, on one-year leave to take a hack at a spot on Canada’s Olympic roster, was rumored to have transferred to Boston University for the following season.
Two months later, the Terriers, who had lost, 8-0, to a Wakefield-led UNH team in the 2008 semifinals, dislodged the four-time Hockey East champion, 4-0, at the same stage of the playoffs. The following afternoon, sophomore point-based puckslinger Tara Watchorn leveled a sudden-death strike to vanquish Connecticut, 2-1, and grant BU its first pennant in five years of existence.
Over the summer, Wakefield’s intention to bring her 59 career goals and 95 points to the Hub for her junior year was confirmed. But by then, the limelight was devoted to another otherworldly signee, Marie-Philip Poulin.
Poulin, who inserted both goals for Canada in the Olympic gold medal game, enrolled at BU as a 19-year-old freshman while Vancouver teammate Catherine Ward is spending one season as a graduate student. And as of the December deceleration, Poulin and Wakefield are tied for the team lead with 15 goals and 28 points apiece.
5. C-Dub ships out to Boston
The Boston Blades –complete with 14 former Hockey Easterners, four ECAC graduates, and five U.S. Olympians, including Angela Ruggiero- made their debut in the CWHL on Oct. 30, blanking Burlington, 3-0, at the Bright Hockey Center. The Harvard alum Ruggiero, playing on her alma mater’s pond, assisted on the team’s first-ever power play goal to cement the final score with 2:05 to spare in regulation.
To date, the Blades are third in the five-team league with a 7-5-0 record. Ruggiero, along with New Hampshire graduate Sam Faber and ex-Minnesota-Duluth Bulldog Jess Koizumi, lead the team with seven goals apiece. Maine alumna Mandy Cronin has garnered the bulk of the crease time and boasts a league-best .914 save percentage.
Honorable mentions
Three months after Dan Lichterman abdicated his post, Maria Lewis pounced on her first head-coaching opportunity, accepting the Maine Black Bears’ offer in July after a decade of assisting the skipper at three other programs. Halfway through her inaugural campaign, Lewis has already assured the 8-7-4 Black Bears their best overall record since 2006-07…Harvard senior goaltender Christina Kessler’s sparkling career came to a callously abrupt end in late January when she sustained a torn ACL during practice. However, the aforementioned CWHL has given Kessler extra ice. She is 3-6-0 in nine starts for Burlington…After the glory had spent five years in the Midwest, the Assabet Valley U19 program shifted USA Hockey’s balance of power back to New England. A 1-0 overtime triumph over the dynastic Shattuck-St. Mary’s team gave Assabet its seventh all-time U19 title, but its first since 2003.
Al Daniel is the Hockey East correspondent to Beyond the Dashers
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