UND women’s hockey coach Brian Idalski tweeted this morning that he received a National Letter of Intent from UND’s top targeted forward for the 2013 class.
While he didn’t say who it was yet, I can guarantee that it is Finnish National Team forward Susanna Tapani. I know that UND had been pursuing her.
It’s a big get for UND, which will be looking to replace a ton of offense lost with the graduation of the Lamoureux twins.
Tapani recently played for Finland at the IIHF World Championship.
UND senior captain Jocelyne Lamoureux was named the team MVP at the banquet this week, leading the women’s hockey awards.
Full awards are listed below thanks to sports info director Derek Koenen.
UND Women’s Hockey Team Awards
Most Valuable Player – Jocelyne Lamoureux, Sr. (Grand Forks, N.D.)
Best Defensive Player – Monique Lamoureux, Sr. (Grand Forks, N.D.)
Co-Rookies of the Year – Meghan Dufault, Fr. (Winnipeg, Manitoba) and Shelby Amsley-Benzie (Warroad, Minn.)
Most Improved Player – Shelby Amsley-Benzie, Fr. (Warroad, Minn.)
Most Dedicated Player – Jocelyne Lamoureux, Sr. (Grand Forks, N.D.)
Academic Award – Michelle Bonapace-Potvin, So. (Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec)
UND fans should get ready to see a very familiar face behind the opponent’s bench at Ralph Engelstad Arena in the coming years.
Miami and head coach Rico Blasi agreed to a 10-year extension that will keep him under contract through 2022-23.
Blasi has been one of college hockey’s winningest coaches in the last decade.
He also did a great job leading the RedHawks to a CCHA title this season, despite losing four top players to the CHL.
Mayor Mike Brown proclaimed Monday as Jocelyne and Monique Lamoureux Day in Grand Forks. The honor comes after the Lamoureux twins won a third gold medal at the Women’s World Championship in Ottawa.
Here’s the transcript of the official proclamation:
WHEREAS, Jocelyne and Monique Lamoureux helped Team USA capture its fifth gold medal in the past seven years by defeating the Canada 3-2 in the 2013 International Ice Hockey Federation World Championship. It marked the third gold medal in the event for the Lamoureuxs, who were two of the top scorers for the United States; and
WHEREAS, The Lamoureuxs were key parts of Team USA’s 2010 silver medal-winning Olympic hockey team, thrilling fans with their elite speed, stick-handling and teamwork; and
WHEREAS, The Lamoureuxs completed a full class load at the University of North Dakota, during the Olympic year, which enabled them to earn their undergraduate degrees, begin graduate school and be on track to graduate with their Master’s Degrees in 2014; and
WHEREAS, The Lamoureuxs are excellent students, effectively managing their athletics and academics, as evidenced by their perfect grade point averages in Graduate School, and
WHEREAS, In March, the Lamoureuxs completed two of the more storied Division I college hockey careers, leading UND to its second-straight NCAA tournament berth with Jocelyne as the all-time leading scorer in the WCHA, followed by her sister, Monique; and
WHEREAS, The Lamoureuxs have received multiple nominations for the Patty Kazmaier Award for the top NCAA women’s ice hockey player. Jocelyne was a four-time nominee and Monique was nominated for the award three times.
Now, therefore, I, Mayor Michael R. Brown, do proclaim April 15, 2013, as Jocelyne and Monique Lamoureux Day in the City of Grand Forks, as recognition of their exceptional skills in sport and accomplishments in the classroom and call on the citizens of Grand Forks to celebrate these exceptional role models for young boys and girls of the community and trailblazers for female athlete everywhere.
Monique Lamoureux scored twice and Jocelyne Lamoureux set both of them up as Team USA beat Michelle Karvinen and Team Finland 4-2 at the IIHF Women’s World Championship on Wednesday.
Karvinen scored a goal for the Finns and has now been in on three of their four goals at the Worlds.
At the conclusion of the game, the Lamoureuxs and Karvinen were tied as the leading scorers in the tournament with three points each.
Monique was named Team USA’s player of the game.
The U.S. finishes pool play Friday against Switzerland. Medal round play begins Saturday.
Canada rallied from a two-goal deficit in the third period to force overtime, then beat the U.S. in a shootout in the opener of the IIHF Women’s World Championship on Tuesday night in Ottawa.
The game was in pool play and the two teams are still expected to meet for the gold medal on Tuesday.
Monique Lamoureux scored the first goal of the game, burying a feed from twin sister Jocelyne Lamoureux. Warroad’s Gigi Marvin also assisted on that goal.
In another pool play game, Michelle Karvinen came up big for Finland, scoring a goal and adding an assist in a 2-1 win over Switzerland.
Today, the Lamoureux twins and Karvinen will go head-to-head in a pool play game at 2:30 p.m.
The Women’s World Championship hockey tournament begins today in Ottawa and a record six UND players will be involved.
United States — Jocelyne Lamoureux (F), Monique Lamoureux (F)
Finland — Michelle Karvinen (F)
Sweden — Johanna Fallman (D)
Germany — Tanja Eisenschmid (D), Susanne Fellner (D)
Two other local players will be on the U.S. team in Warroad’s Gigi Marvin and Roseau’s Sarah Erickson.
This tournament should be a great preview of the 2014 Sochi Games, being that they are just 10 months away. The tournament opens in classic form with the U.S. playing Canada at 6:30 p.m. tonight. There will be a webcast on fasthockey.com.
The U.S. will play Finland on Wednesday afternoon and Switzerland on Friday afternoon. Monique led the World Championship in scoring last year with 14 points in 5 games.
Also of note, UND video coach Max Markowitz will be the video coach for the Finnish team.
Next week, three UND players will compete in the Division I Women’s Worlds, which is the second tier of teams. Josefine Jakobsen will play for Denmark, while Andrea Dalen and Jorid Dagfinrud play for Norway. Those games will be played in Norway.
I will try to update after the games.
UND’s Jocelyne and Monique Lamoureux are both first-team All-Americans.
The All-American team was announced Thursday night at the NCAA Frozen Four and it is littered with UND and Minnesota players.
And yes, there is irony to Jocelyne being second-team all-conference and first-team All-American.
First team All-Americans
F — Jocelyne Lamoureux, North Dakota
F — Brianne Jenner, Cornell
F — Amanda Kessel, Minnesota
D — Monique Lamoureux, North Dakota
D — Megan Bozek, Minnesota
G — Noora Raty, Minnesota
Second team All-Americans
F — Brianna Decker, Wisconsin
F — Kendall Coyne, Northeastern
F — Alex Carpenter, Boston College
D — Lauriane Rougeau, Cornell
D — Blake Bolden, Boston College
G — Alex Rigsby, Wisconsin
VIEWING NOTES: The game begins at 4 p.m. It is NOT televised, but there is a FREE webcast on the NCAA website. You should be able to access it here. The game WILL be on the radio on 1440 AM The Fan in Grand Forks.
*****
The UND women have been setting program records and reaching new heights year after year. This afternoon, they have a chance to conquer another frontier: the NCAA Frozen Four.
It won’t be easy.
Standing in their way is 38-0 Minnesota, a team that has won 46 straight games dating back to last season. UND is well aware of the Gophers’ superlatives, but is happy to have another shot at them anyway.
Read what UND is saying about matchup No. 6 between the teams this season.
USCHO has a breakdown of all the NCAA quarterfinal matchups, and writer Arlan Marttila says that “UND likely presents the biggest obstacle to a Minnesota repeat.” Read the full capsules here.
The Minot Daily News has a big story on hometown player Ali Parizek, who scored one of UND’s biggest goals of the year (OT winner against Bemidji State). Parizek says she’s living a dream by playing for UND. Read that story here.
The Pioneer Press has been doing Q&As with the Gopher women’s program this week. No. 1 — Amanda Kessel. No. 2 — Brad Frost.
The Star Tribune also has a feature on Kessel here.
USCHO also has a running conversation between women’s hockey writers about their thoughts on the NCAA tournament. Read that here.
The Herald planned on sending Tom Miller down to Ridder Arena once again to cover the NCAA quarterfinal, but because of the poor road conditions, it’s unlikely that he will be making the trip. We’ll do our best to cover the game from here.
UND did send Matt Schill down earlier this week, so there should be some videos coming from him. For now, here’s a feature on the greatest players ever to suit up for the women’s program, the Lamoureux twins.
Two years ago, after North Dakota was left out of the NCAA tournament instead of Dartmouth and Minnesota-Duluth was placed at Wisconsin first round, a longtime women’s college hockey expert wrote an e-mail to college hockey coaches explaining why the Pairwise Rankings — more specifically the RPI component — doesn’t work for the sport.
The e-mail was written by Harvard alum David DeRemer, who is probably the best expert on the Pairwise Rankings and the NCAA selection process I have ever come across — men’s or women’s side (DeRemer correctly predicted UND would get in this year over Wisconsin, despite the readings on the USCHO Pairwise).
Below is an excerpt of his e-mail to NCAA coaches in 2011:
Despite its widespread adoption by NCAA committees, the ratings percentage index (RPI) is a deeply flawed system with a bias towards interconference parity. To see why the RPI is flawed, consider a world with two conference where every team in conference A is better than every team in conference B, and each team only plays one nonconference game. As the number of conference games grows large, the RPIs of teams in each conference would converge to each team’s conference record, even though every team in conference A is better. While I don’t claim every team in the WCHA is better than every team in Hockey East, this is a rough approximation of why BC and BU ended up ahead of Minnesota, despite most human voters and statistically sound rankings placing Minnesota higher.
Statistics professors with interests in college hockey have developed multiple ranking systems which do not suffer from this bias towards parity in the RPI. One is the KRACH, hosted by USCHO. Another is the Rutter rankings. Both rankings use methods well accepted by the statisticians. Both rankings come to the conclusion that Minnesota is No. 3, UMD is much better than No. 7, and UND should have been No. 7. I’ll briefly describe each rating. For any pair of teams i and j with ratings A_i and A_j, the KRACH assumes the probability of team i winning is (A_i / (A_i + A_j)). The KRACH then simply picks the ratings so that the probabilities best match the actual results. Rutter does much the same, except it uses a slightly different formula for the probability involving the normal distribution and uses a slightly different estimation method.
When the RPI is flawed, it spills over into other criteria as well. For example, both KRACH and Rutter support the conclusion that Bemidji is one of the top 12 teams. Since record vs. top 12 teams is a selection criteria, WCHA teams were denied appropriate credit for their results against Bemidji.
Women’s hockey has better reasons than any other NCAA sport to institute a better system than the RPI and should take the institutional lead in doing so. Few sports other than women’s hockey have had a conference as successful as the WCHA that plays such a small share of their schedules against the other large conferences, yet the sport still attempts to conduct a truly national tournament. The RPI parity bias problem I described is stronger in women’s hockey than in most other sports.
It is important that WCHA members and interested parties and media respond to this injustice not by personally attacking the integrity of committee members or by suggesting minor tweaks like putting greater priority on “protecting the top seed” or “avoiding intraconference matchups.” The fundamental problem with the current bracket is that the NCAA selection criteria unfairly underrate all WCHA teams. If the committee had used a better criterion than the RPI, the pairing of two of the nation’s best teams, who have combined for the last 5 NCAA titles and met in 3 consecutive Frozen Fours, would have been avoided.
Now, if women’s college hockey were using the Rutter Rankings, which are mentioned in the e-mail, not only would UND be in the tournament, it would be a top-four seed hosting a regional this weekend. Also, Wisconsin would be in the tournament under the other rankings (I think we all know the Badgers were a top-8 team this year, too).
Rutter Rankings
1. Minnesota
2. Cornell
3. North Dakota
4. Boston University
5. Wisconsin
6. Boston College
7. Harvard
8. Clarkson
KRACH rankings
1. Minnesota
2. Cornell
3. Boston University
4. Boston College
5. North Dakota
6. Harvard
7. Wisconsin
8. Clarkson
Massey Rankings
1. Minnesota
2. North Dakota
3. Cornell
4. Wisconsin
5. Boston College
6. Boston University
7. Harvard
8. Clarkson
