Women’s hockey readying for exhibition match against Boston Blades

The No. 6 Boston University women’s hockey team will welcome the Boston Blades of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League to Walter Brown Arena Saturday for an exhibition contest.

The Blades are one of five teams that make up the CWHL, one of the only major women’s ice hockey leagues, and are the only club located in the United States. The Blades also have a handful of Olympians on their roster, as the league is one of the only places outside of college that Olympic-hopefuls can play.

The game won’t count toward anything in the record books, but BU (1-1) coach Brian Durocher said both he and his staff are looking forward to the opportunity to assess players that they haven’t been able to watch extensively in a game situation.

“We get a chance to play in a little bit more of a relaxed setting,” he said. “While we want to go out and win, the first priority is continue to work on some things as a team, and maybe even get a better look at some of the bubble players on the team, people who are role players, people who work as hard as anybody else but they don’t get the playing time rewards.”

This past weekend in Minnesota, Durocher played with a fairly consistent lineup and made no major changes from game to game. Because of this, junior defenseman Diana Bennett, freshman defenseman Savannah Newton and freshman forward Anna Streifel did not dress for either game on the road trip. Durocher said he will take the opportunity to watch these players in a game situation.

“They’ll be in the lineup this weekend, so we’ll have a chance to look at them again in game activity,” he said. “I’m not worried about combinations. I’m not worried about d-pairs, but again, just getting to see some of those people and probably rolling four lines.”

The game also gives BU a chance to iron out some of the kinks in its consistency and special teams. Durocher noted that the Terriers’ matchup with St. Cloud State University on Oct. 3 was well played, more so than the next night’s tilt with the University of Minnesota, later adding that decisions made on the penalty kill and power play could have been cleaner.

“Killing penalties, we were maybe not making the best rotations,” Durocher said. “And on the power play, we might have got a little bit hyper or lost a little bit of our poise to make the extra pass or two, and then delivering it to the net, we hit it off a lot of shin pads and put it into people’s skates.”

Playing the Blades brings two familiar faces back to Walter Brown in recently graduated defensemen Tara Watchorn — who most recently won gold with senior forward Marie-Philip Poulin in the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics in February — and Kaleigh Fratkin. This time, they will just be sitting on the opposing bench.

Durocher also emphasized the importance of the CWHL in terms of its role in expanding the reach of the sport and providing a place for women to continue their hockey career after leaving the college ranks.

“The kids that played the game for 15 years of their life when they get there, they’re at the end of their college career,” Durocher said. “There’s still a passion to want to play a little bit longer.

“There’s a lot of places where we can help grow the game, and having a special league and having a spot for the kids to play is important.”