5 thoughts on Wisconsin women's hockey NCAA Tournament path
Wisconsin women's hockey has learned its NCAA Tournament fate, and its path to back-to-back titles could be 'more competitive than it's ever been'
It only lasts two weeks, but the tournament that will define the six-month-long Wisconsin women’s hockey season has finally arrived. The NCAA Tournament bracket has finally been revealed, and a significant challenge awaits the Wisconsin Badgers, hoping to win back-to-back national titles in a sport that is “more competitive than it’s ever been.”
“Each conference, each league in itself has become deeper,” Wisconsin head coach Mark Johnson said in a press conference last week.
After falling in the WCHA Final Faceoff championship game, the Badgers earned the No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament. There, UW will host regional round action beginning with a regional semifinal on Thursday, March 12th at 7:00 p.m. Central. Wisconsin awaits the winner of that matchup between the Quinnipiac Bobcats and Franklin Pierce Ravens in the regional final on Saturday, March 14th, at 1:00 p.m.
If the bracket were simply seeded No. 1 through No. 11, though, those would not be the teams vying for a chance to hand the Badgers their first-ever home loss in the NCAA Tournament.
“When I first started, you could probably predict a lot of weekends, depending on who was playing against each other,” Johnson, whose 699 career wins are the most of any women’s ice hockey head coach in NCAA history, reflected. “Nowadays, you don’t know.”
No straight-seeding this year
First things first: how did we get here? Why does No. 2 Wisconsin host a matchup between Quinnipiac and Franklin Pierce?
Technically, the NCAA Tournament selection committee seeds only the top five teams into the bracket. The remaining six selections are unseeded. The committee usually places those six teams in the bracket according to their true-seeding position, but this year, some rules got in the way of that.
After the five teams that earn auto-qualifying bids to the national tournament (by winning their respective conference tournaments), the committee selects six at-large teams and seeds the field according to the teams’ positions in the NCAA Percentage Index (NPI).
With that in mind, the true seeding of this year’s tournament would be as follows:
Ohio State (WCHA AQ)
Wisconsin
Penn State (AHA AQ)
Minnesota
Northeastern
UConn (Hockey East AQ)
Quinnipiac (ECAC AQ)
Yale
Princeton
Duluth
Franklin Pierce (NEWHA AQ)*
*Franklin Pierce is 25th in NPI, but in the field as the NEWHA automatic-qualifier. Cornell is the first team out of the field and the 11th team in the NPI rankings.
In a true-seeded 11-team bracket, that creates the following matchups:
No. 1 Ohio State vs. Yale/Princeton
No. 4 Minnesota vs. No. 5 Northeastern
No. 2 Wisconsin vs Quinnipiac/Duluth
No. 3 Penn State vs UConn/Franklin Pierce
Yale and Princeton, however, as both members of the ECAC, cannot meet in the opening round of the tournament, according to the NCAA’s bracketing principles. That necessitated a change somewhere by the committee; it eventually resulted in the bracket we now have.
The order in which I am going to present the committee’s decisions here is not necessarily what happened behind closed doors. In my opinion, however, it is easiest to think of the way this tournament was bracketed as the result of a series of waterfall effects.
First, to create a suitable pairing for the regional semifinal in Columbus, “No. 10” Duluth filled the spot that would have otherwise been filled by “No. 9” Princeton.
That creates a knock-on effect. Placing Princeton in the Madison regional (in place of Duluth) would be simple, but it would break the same bracketing rule that led the committee down this path in the first place. Princeton and Quinnipiac both compete in the ECAC, so the committee needed to create a different regional semifinal matchup.
That left only one other option: sending Princeton to State College for the regional hosted by No. 3 Penn State. That sent “No. 11” Franklin Pierce to No. 2 Wisconsin’s region.
Badgers fans will be treated to some of the best college hockey has to offer
Whether Badgers fans see the Ravens or Bobcats take to Lance Johnson Memorial Rink inside LaBahn Arena on Saturday, they will be lucky to see one of the better players in college hockey this season. NEWHA programs have been outscored 22-3 since the conference tournament winner began receiving an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament in 2023, but this FPU squad is led by precisely the player needed for an upset bid.
Great hockey coaches will not let it be forgotten how far great goaltending can take you in a single-elimination tournament.
“Goaltending is a must when you want to win national championships,” Ohio State head coach Nadine Muzerall, who has won two titles as head coach of the Buckeyes, said after capturing the WCHA Final Faceoff crown on Saturday.
“Hockey, you know, maybe unlike other sports is unique because if I have a goaltender that is really good on a particular day, I might have a chance,” Johnson, who has won more national championships than any other NCAA ice hockey head coach, said in a press conference last week.
Franklin Pierce’s Jill Hertl could be the goaltender who gives the NEWHA its first-ever tournament win.
The senior’s .955 save percentage leads the country, backstopping a defense that allows only 1.83 goals per game (the eighth-fewest nationally). In the conference tournament, Hertl allowed only two goals in four games, posting the 18th and 19th shutouts of her career to break Franklin Pierce’s program record and earn NEWHA Tournament Most Outstanding Player Honors. The Highland Park, Illinois native’s 975 saves so far this season are the most in a single campaign in program history.
In the regular season, Hertl posted two performances of 50+ saves and three assists en route to winning NEWHA Goaltender of the Year.
Quinnipiac has a formidable defense of its own, allowing the third-fewest goals per game with sophomore Felicia Frank in net, posting the fifth-best save percentage in the country. It is an offensive playmaker, however, that headlines the Bobcats’ roster.
Junior forward Kahlen Lamarche will be the nation’s leading scorer among all returning players next season. The Sudbury, Ontario native’s 42 goals lead the way nationally, while her 19 assists give her 61 points on the season, the third-most in the country. The first team All-ECAC honoree is among the top ten finalists for the Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award.
Lamarche has been impossible to contain at times this postseason. In a three-game series against Brown, the Everest Academy product found the back of the net seven times. In the conference tournament, the first team all-ECAC honoree tallied nine points in five games.
Power-play goals could be difficult to muster
One quirk of the regional action taking place in Madison this weekend is that it pits three of the nation’s top special teams units against one another. Wisconsin still boasts the most effective penalty-kill unit in the country with the help of specialists like Marianne Picard, but its potential regional final foes are not far behind.
The second-best PK unit nationally belongs to Northeastern, but Franklin Pierce sits in third, and Quinnipiac’s is fourth. Three of the top four penalty-killing teams in the country meet in Madison this weekend. How exciting!
Ultimately, this likely translates to a special teams edge for the Badgers. Leaving aside the fact that four of the five skaters on its top power-play unit are Olympians (with the fifth being perhaps the world’s most notable Olympic roster snub), UW’s PP metrics leave Quinnipiac and FPU’s in the dust.
Wisconsin converts on the power-play on 34.75% of its opportunities, more often than any other team in the country, and is one of only two teams that do so more than 30% of the time. Quinnipiac, meanwhile, sits in the bottom half of college hockey in power play efficiency. Franklin Pierce sits in literally the last spot of the top half.
Déjà vu awaits in the Frozen Four
So long as Penn State can defend its home ice and advance to the Frozen Four, Wisconsin’s path to the national title game includes a matchup in the national semifinal in which it will get the last line change in its opponent’s home arena.
A season ago, the top-ranked Badgers faced the No. 4 Minnesota Golden Gophers inside the University of Minnesota’s Ridder Arena en route to their eighth national championship. No. 2 UW may face a similar situation in the 2026 tournament as No. 3 PSU hosts the Frozen Four this season.
Wisconsin has a mixed history playing teams in true road environments in the NCAA tournament. Since 2006, UW is 2-2 in such situations. It is 1-1 in national semifinals in that span, splitting a pair of Frozen Four games against the Golden Gophers in 2015 and 2025.
No familiar foes await Bucky
With Ohio State, Duluth, and Minnesota all on the opposite half of the bracket, Wisconsin would not face another WCHA team until the national title game. Before this season, the Badgers’ path to the final game of the year has included at least one other conference foe in UW’s half of the bracket in four of the past five tournaments.
Wisconsin has limited history against each of its potential foes in the regional final and the national semifinal. Its most-played matchup among those teams is against Quinnipiac. The Badgers are 8-1-1 against the Bobcats all-time, with no postseason meetings. They recently completed a set of non-conference home-and-home series. In the 2021-22 season, UW went 1-0-1 in a two-game set in Madison. The following year, the teams split a pair of 3-0 affairs at QU, with the Bobcats winning the series finale.
Those ten games against Quinnipiac are nearly as many games as Wisconsin has played against Franklin Pierce, Penn State, Princeton, and UConn combined.
FPU, a relatively new NCAA women’s ice hockey program established in 2012, began play at the national collegiate level in 2017. The Ravens have never faced UW. The Badgers are 3-1 against the Nittany Lions, 2-0-1 against the Tigers, and 3-0-1 against the Huskies. All 11 of those games were regular-season matchups.
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