RinkWise podcast: Kicking off the women’s college hockey season

Tara Watchorn, now the BU coach, spent the last two years as the coach at Stonehill. (Matt Woolverton/BU Athletics)

The women’s college hockey season is underway and there’s been a bit of a shakeup on the local scene.

For the last bunch of years, Northeastern has been the runaway favorite in Hockey East.

But this season, a number of other teams look poised to try and scooch past Northeastern and plant their flag in the No. 1 spot.

On the latest RinkWise podcast, Merrimack assistant coach Stephanie Wood and I discussed every aspect of the New England women’s college hockey scene.

On the parity in Hockey East

Wood: “I think one thing to note right off the bat is when we’re looking at the Hockey East women’s landscape this year, I would expect that you’re going to see a much closer and tighter race between the programs, right? Northeastern will still enter this year as the No. 1 but they did lose a lot last year. They lost what we call generational players. Just some superstar status players that really separated them from the pack. They’re going to be doing it a little tighter — a little closer to everyone else.”

On Tara Watchorn taking over at BU

Wood: “What an honor for Tara Watchorn to come in behind [Brian Durocher]. Just a really renowned alum of the program. And as we know, that’s generally the direction that BU goes. They like to rehire a lot of their own. I think she’s going to do an incredible job, clearly just look at what she did at Stonehill in starting that program. In knowing her, I think she absolutely is going to recreate that program into her won culture just like she did when she started the program at Stonehill. And I think that does take a little bit of time. I would expect BU to be similar to last year, if not maybe a little bit better. But I think we’re going to see a lot of change over the next one to three years with that program.”

The RinkWise podcast can be streamed here and on major platforms, such as Apple Podcasts and Spotify.