Boston University Womens Hockey

Thirty years as a club side

Women's hockey at Boston University began as a club team in 1974-75 and stayed that way for three decades. The programme was elevated to NCAA status for 2005-06, and the first varsity game was played on 7 October 2005 — a 4-3 defeat to Northeastern, which has remained the reference point for almost every important night since.

Brian Durocher was hired to run it and stayed from 2005 until 2023. The team moved into Walter Brown Arena, the 1971 building that had housed the men's side from 1971 to 2005 before they decamped to Agganis Arena in January 2005. That handover left the women with something unusual in the college game: a 3,806-seat on-campus rink effectively given over to one team.

Poulin, and the six years that set the ceiling

The programme's peak arrived quickly. Marie-Philip Poulin joined in 2010 and the Terriers won Hockey East tournament titles in 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015, adding regular-season crowns in 2011 and 2013. They reached the NCAA tournament in each of those six years and played for the national championship twice, in 2011 and 2013, losing both finals to Minnesota.

Then the tournament invitations stopped for a decade. The export line kept going — Jennifer Wakefield played for Canada at the 2014 and 2018 Olympics, and Andrea Brändli and Nadia Mattivi represented Switzerland and Italy respectively at the 2026 Games — but the team itself spent ten seasons outside the national bracket.

The overtime season

Tara Watchorn took the job in 2023. Her second year produced the best record the programme had posted since 2019-20: 24-12-2, and a conference tournament run with no precedent in Hockey East. The Terriers went to overtime in all three of their playoff games, the first team in the league's history to do so.

The last of them was the final, on 8 March 2025 at UConn's Toscano Family Ice Forum. Sydney Healey buried a rebound at the crease 4:43 into extra time to beat Northeastern 3-2, giving BU a sixth Joe Bertagna Trophy, its first since 2015, and drawing the Terriers level with the Huskies for the most women's titles in conference history.

The automatic bid took them to LaBahn Arena in Madison on 13 March 2025, where a seventh NCAA appearance ended in a regional semi-final. Clarkson scored twice inside the opening 5:30; Lindsay Bochna replied seventeen seconds later, Callie Shanahan made 27 saves, and an empty-net goal inside the final minute settled it 3-1.

A year that went the other way

The follow-up season went badly wrong. BU finished 2025-26 at 11-21-2, and the two games that will be remembered from it were both lost in overtime.

The Beanpot semi-final on 13 January 2026 was the high point. A crowd of 2,281 — a record for a women's game at Walter Brown — watched Lexie Bertelsen score at 4:29, Lily Shannon equalise for Northeastern at 10:32, and Maeve Carey win it on a power play in overtime, with Mari Pietersen stopping 35 of 36. The final at TD Garden a week later, on 20 January, went to Harvard 2-1 when Carla McSweeney converted a penalty shot in extra time. Harvard goaltender Ainsley Tuffy made 46 saves, took the Bertagna Award and tournament MVP with a.977 save percentage across two games, and handed Harvard a sixteenth title and its first since 2022. For BU it was a third consecutive defeat in the championship game.

The season ended at Walter Brown on 28 February 2026, in the odd position of hosting a home playoff game as the visiting side on paper: top-seeded Northeastern, who no longer have a rink of their own, were the designated host. Éloïse Caron scored at 4:00 of the first, Healey answered shorthanded eight minutes into the second, and Emy McDermid ended it with 1:14 left in the second overtime. Lisa Jönsson made 39 saves. Attendance was 1,203.

Almost a different team

What takes the ice in October 2026 is largely new. Five of the top six scorers have gone, among them seniors Healey, Clara Yuhn and Luisa Welcke, who between them produced 92 of the team's 157 points. Eight freshmen have come in, with Quinn Taylor and Loélie Lachapelle arriving on the back of heavy junior-level scoring.

The leadership group named on 25 September 2026 is all-senior: forward Neely Nicholson as captain — the first forward to wear the C since Kaleigh Donnelly in 2021-22 — with Greta Henderson, a transfer from St Cloud State, and Pietersen as assistants. Pietersen is the first goaltender in the role since Shanahan in 2024-25, and comes off a season of 19 appearances at a.925 save percentage and 2.15 goals-against average, plus selection to Canada's national development team.

The opening weekend offered no comfort. After an exhibition against LIU on 26 September, BU went to defending national champion Wisconsin and lost 7-0 on 1 October, five of the goals conceded in the second period, then 4-1 on 2 October, with Lachapelle's first-period power-play goal the only BU score of the trip. Hockey East play starts at New Hampshire on 9 October; the first home game is Holy Cross on 10 October. Writers at the student hockey blog have the regular season landing somewhere between 13-19-2 and 17-15-2.

The 34-game shape of the year

The schedule announced on 16 June 2026 runs to 34 regular-season games, 18 of them at Walter Brown, with two in-season tournaments bracketing the autumn and winter.

The first is the bigger occasion. BU hosts the Ice Breaker on 23 and 24 October, confirmed on 4 May 2026 — the first time the university has staged the women's event and the first time a Hockey East team has hosted it at all. Minnesota State meet Robert Morris at 4pm on the Friday, BU play Yale at 7pm, and Saturday brings a consolation game at 2pm and the final at 5pm. The Beanpot follows in January, with BU chasing a second varsity title.