Harvard coach Katey Stone offered a fresh perspective on the subject, noting that the Canadian National Team was not the only reason student athletes missed games in Frozen Four competition.

“Obviously we’d all love to have all these kids here,” she said. “Some kids don’t play because they’re sick, some kids don’t play because they’re injured, some kids don’t play because they have the opportunity to play for a national team.”

During the 2001-2002 season, Harvard was left without two star players, Jennifer Botterill ’02-’03 and co-captain Angela Ruggiero when they left to play for the Canadian and U.S. Olympic teams, respectively. Ruggiero also missed the 2000-2001 to train for the U.S. National and Olympic teams.

MAGIC EIGHT PUCK

With the question marks presented to teams prior to the Frozen Four selections—Dartmouth and St. Lawrence wondered about having their star players missing in action for the championship series and Wisconsin and Minnesota-Duluth hoped to catch a break and enter the tournament as a dark horse—the issue of tournament expansion to the Frozen Eight arose.

Both Stone and Minneosta coach Laura Halldorson had plenty to say on the subject.

“Certainly, there were six or seven, maybe eight teams that could be here and competing on a very high level this weekend,” Stone said. “It’s time for expansion. There are so many opportunities to play women’s college hockey in this country now that it’s only fair to provide as many opportunities as possible to compete for the national championship.”

“I can’t wait for that to happen,” Halldorson said. “We as coaches want it to happen sooner but from an NCAA perspective, you have to walk before you run. The NCAA wants to make sure that it will be a strong field. If you went to eight teams, you would have good games and more teams would have a shot at the championship.”

—Staff writer John R. Hein can be reached at hein@fas.harvard.edu.