Her Puck Perspective: Women’s Hockey Weekly Recap – February 1, 2026 

It was another fun week, with the final PWHL games before the Olympic break, and the first NCAA games without the top players who are now in Milan to represent their countries. Let’s dive into what happened this week.

News/Notes/Roster Updates

• The Fleet had a number of roster updates this week: Defender Mia Biotti and forward Loren Gabel have been activated off the reserve player list, while defender Riley Brengman and forward Sophie Shirley have been placed on LTIR.
• The Charge signed forward Liv Wallin to a standard player agreement and released defender Sam Isbell.
• The PWHL announced that they reduced Taylor Girard’s suspension from 4 games to 3 games. She was suspended according to the PWHL rules for leaving the bench during an altercation. It was good to see the league reduce her suspension, as the rule seemed a bit harsh in the first place.
•  We saw 3 more players hit the 50 lifetime points scored in the PWHL mark this week: Taylor Heise, Brianne Jenner, and Hilary Knight.
• The Frost players received their championship rings this week for their Walter Cup win last season, which was especially helpful timing so that the former Frost players now playing with the Goldeneyes (Claire Thompson, Sophie Jaques, and Mellissa Channel-Watkins) were able to be awarded their rings before their game against the Frost this week.

PWHL Games

Sceptres @ Victoire

• Final score: Victoire 3, Sceptres 0
• Attendance: 8,018
• Goal scorers (Sceptres): n/a
• Goal scorers (Victoire): Natálie Mlýnková (4), Marie-Philip Poulin (7), Shiann Darkangelo (3)
• Thoughts: Toronto’s woes continued in this game. They just don’t look like a strong, connected team right now, so maybe the Olympic break is just what they need to reset and come back better after the break. The Victoire, on the other hand, continue to look strong. They scored 2 power play goals in this game and played a solid overall game for a nice win before the break.

Sirens @ Fleet 

• Final score: Fleet 4, Sirens 3 (SO)
• Attendance: 4,697
• Goal scorers (Sirens): Kristin O’Neill (4), Kristýna Kaltounková (10), Kristýna Kaltounková (11)
• Goal scorers (Fleet): Abby Newhook (4), Liz Schepers (2), Jamie Lee Rattray (3)
• Thoughts: Kristýna Kaltounková continues to lead this young, exciting Sirens team, and she, and the entire Sirens team, is sure fun to watch. They lost to the Fleet in a shootout in this game, but came back twice against the best team in the league so far this season, which was impressive in its own right. This was a back and forth game, with the Fleet scoring 1 goal in the first period, the Sirens scoring 2 goals in the second period to take the lead, before Boston scored 2 goals early in the 3rd period to take the lead, only for the Sirens to tie the game later in the 3rd period to force overtime and ultimately a shootout. The goalies were strong in the shootout, and Alina Müller had two incredible moves to score goals in the last 2 rounds of the shootout to earn the win for the Fleet. If you haven’t see Müller’s shootout moves, and in particular her move in the 2nd to last round, go find a video online; it’s one of the best moves you’ll see all season.

Torrent @ Charge

• Final score: Charge 4, Torrent 2
• Attendance: 6,787
• Goal scorers (Torrent): Hilary Knight (3), Jessie Eldridge (5)
• Goal scorers (Charge): Fanuza Kadirova (4), Rebecca Leslie (7), Rebecca Leslie (8), Emily Clark (2)
• Thoughts: This game wasn’t as uneven as the score would suggest. The Torrent took the lead in the second period, and took another lead in the third period after the Charge had tied the game early in the period. Rebecca Leslie tied the score with about 5 minutes left in third period, and then in the last minute of the game, things got unpredictable. Rebecca Leslie scored another goal with 30 seconds left in the game to give the Charge the lead, and they then added another goal 13 seconds later to seal the victory, but this was a close, tightly contested game for most of the night.

Goldeneyes @ Frost 

• Final score: Frost 4, Goldeneyes 1
• Attendance: 5,249
• Goal scorers (Goldeneyes): Michelle Karvinen (3)
• Goal scorers (Frost): Kendall Cooper (1), Britta Curl-Salemme (6), Kelly Pannek (8), Britta Curl-Salemme (7)
• Thoughts: This had the makings of an exciting game, with the Frost playing so well for quite awhile now, and the Goldeneyes looking like they were getting on a roll in the past couple of weeks. While the Goldeneyes outshot the Frost 32-22, this was a fairly lopsided game for the Frost, with the Goldeneyes only goal coming after they were already down 3-0. Maddie Rooney continued her recent strong play in net for the Frost.

NCAA Games

#1 Wisconsin @ #3 Minnesota 
#2 Ohio State vs. #9 MN Duluth 
#4 Penn State vs. Robert Morris 
#5 Quinnipiac @ #11 Clarkson & St. Lawrence 
#6 Northeastern vs. #13 Holy Cross 
#7 UConn vs. New Hampshire 
#8 Princeton @ St. Lawrence & #11 Clarkson 
#10 Yale @ RPI & Union 

This was the first weekend that the NCAA teams competed without their top players who were named to the various Olympic rosters, and there were some big matchups among our top 10 teams.

There’s almost an embarrassment of riches on the top teams, where even though the players who have left the rosters to play in the Olympics are important and will be missed, they have so many other strong players that will now get bigger opportunities to play meaningful minutes in big games. That can only help these teams into the future, as most or all of the players at the Olympics will be graduating after this season and moving onto the PWHL, so this is almost a preview of what these teams might look like next season (though they will obviously have new players joining their rosters next season) without those top players.

Wisconsin and Minnesota was probably the top matchup of the weekend, as the only top 5 matchup, and the two teams split their games, with Minnesota winning in OT in game 1 and Wisconsin winning easily in game 2.

Penn State continues to look strong, while Quinnipiac had a tough weekend, losing both of their games. Northeastern had a tie and a win,and UConn split their weekend series against UConn.

Princeton continues to impress, and they look like they’re continuing to get stronger and play better every weekend. Yale has also played well of late.

Final Thoughts

With the Olympic break now in full swing for the PWHL, and the women’s hockey games starting this upcoming weeks at the Olympics, this weekly recap post will take a few weeks off while we focus on Olympic hockey as well as MN girl’s high school hockey. I will still be breaking down the matchups and results for the Olympics and high school hockey here on the blog, and you can still find NCAA schedules and results on my Instagram page. This weekly recap post will be back like normal after the Olympics are over.