If you’ve followed my work at Giants in the Crease either on Twitter or through the Giants in the Crease website itself, you’ll notice I love stats. There’s no possible way to watch every game in every league possible so stats do come in handy to provide at least a snapshot of a season’s results. Stats don’t tell a whole story, but they help identify some impressive or notable moments in a season. Also, sometimes stats just don’t warrant a whole article, but they need some sort of recognition so that’s why every two-to-three weeks I’ll do an article remarking on interesting stats happening across the hockey world. Without further ado let’s get into the fun stuff!
1. Luleå HF of the SDHL (Swedish Women’s Pro League) won it’s SEVENTH SDHL Championship on March 19, 2024 in a three game sweep of MoDo Hockey. Since their promotion to the SDHL in 2015 they’ve won the last seven of eight SDHL Championships. Back to this playoff run Luleå went 9-0 sweeping all three series’ they were in, outscored their opponents 36-10, and every game ended in regulation. Petra Nieminen lead the way with 16 points in this playoff run while Sara Grahn posted a 0.875 Quality Starts % and 5.832 GSAA.
2. While Luleå is a dynasty at the top level in Sweden, HIFK in Finland is looking to get their own dynasty going and so far the going is good. They beat Kiekko-Espoo in four games to win their second straight Naisten Liiga Championship (the Aurora Borealis Cup). HIFK finished second in the regular season in points (75) but finished first in wins (27) which translated to their Cup win. Apart from the wins showing their elite level of play, in the regular season HIFK had four of five of the leagues top point getters and out of the four Naisten Liiga players to hit 60, three of them came from HIFK. The cherry on top was HIFK goalie Kiia Lahtinen lead the league in SV% (0.933) and was only one of two goalies to have above a 0.920 SV%.
3. Guess who’s back, back again, Skellefteå AIK is back in the SDHL after a 16-year absence! Skellefteå AIK certainly earned it by not losing a game all season. They went 12-0-0 in regular season games and then in the promotion tournament they’d go on to sweep every team for a 6-0 record and a promotion into the SDHL taking the place of AIK. You can say that “third times the charm” is merely a saying but Skellefteå AIK lived it. The past two seasons, 21/22 & 22/23, Skellefteå AIK made it to the final step of promotion convincingly only to lose to Göteborg HC in three games (2-1) and they would go 0-4 vs Frölunda HC/AIK the following season.
4. Last season we saw the creation and domination of Frölunda HC leading to promotion in a single season. This year, the same story played out in Switzerland with EV Zug creating their first women’s club in 14 years. Swiss star Lara Stalder came back home to Switzerland to do what Michelle Karvinen did for Frölunda HC, put up video game numbers. I think it’s fair to say mission accomplished there. Stalder would score 63 goals and post 66 assists for 129 points in 17 regular season games. Her scoring continued into the promotion round where she lead the way with 56 points in 7 games. After a year in the Swiss Women’s Pro B league, SWHL ‘B’, EV Zug will play the 24/25 SWHL ‘A’.
5. It’s time to learn the name Nadine Muzerall. Her and the Ohio State University hockey program are on a roll! Three straight NCAA National Championship Finals and won two of them. The most recent one being the 2024 National Championship where OSU got their revenge over Wisconsin University for the 2023 National Championship defeat. OSU was the number one ranked team going into the WCHA /NCAA National tournaments, and now they’re the number one team coming out of the 2023/24 NCAA season.
Ohio State Claims 2024 National Title Over Wisconsin in Thriller
6. Izzy Daniel is your 2024 Patty Kazmaier Award winner! Everyone has their opinion about who deserved it more but you just can’t argue that Izzy Daniel isn’t on the list of players that deserved to win the Patty Kaz. In the NCAA Daniel finished third in PTS/GP (1.74) with 59 points in 34 games but what stands out the most is Daniel’s production on Cornell. No other player hit 20 goals or 40 points. The next closest in goals to Daniel (21) was Lily Delianedis (16) and next closest in points to Daniel (59) was Delianedis (34) again.
7. The PWHL league average shooting percent is 7.6%. Despite that being the league average shooting %, 61.6% of PWHL players are below the league average. To me this shows that the 38.4% of players above the league average shooting % are the ones mostly showing some level of natural scoring talent in a league where it’s extremely difficult to score goals.
8. Natalie Spooner is the obvious leading candidate for the PWHL MVP (aka the Hayley Wickenheiser Trophy). There’s two contenders though who you can make legitimate arguments for: Grace Zumwinkle and Marie-Philip Poulin. Zumwinkle is second in the PWHL in primary points, second in PTS1/60, second in goals, and third in Goals/60. What will help Zumwinkle’s case is her even strength production where she’s (11) one point behind Spooner (12) for the even strength primary points lead. Poulin is one of the best two-way forwards in the game and is tied with Spooner for the EVPTS1/GP (0.63) lead. What’ll help Poulin’s case as well is that Montréal has lost all three games she’s been out, a first for this season, and they haven’t scored more than two goals in a game she’s been out for.
9. Speaking of Montréal and Toronto, people are loving the rivalry between the two teams. If you watch the games there’s obviously a rivalry between the two teams but if you were to try to explain the rivalry via stats you might find it difficult considering how lopsided it is. In their four meetings Toronto is 4-0 with three of their wins coming in regulation and they’ve shutout Montréal twice. Toronto has a 73.3% goal share, 75% even strength goal share, and a 55.9% shot share versus Montréal this season.
10. She was talked about on the Crease Chats podcast but she deserves to be brought up constantly in an almost annoying way, Chloe Primerano. Her 23/24 season is over and unless she goes back to the 2024 U18 World Championships, her U18 career is over before her U18 year begins. As a U17 player this year Primerano put up 89 points in 29 games in the CSSHL regular season and followed that up with 20 points in five playoff games to win her second straight CSSHL U18 Championship. Primerano won the 22/23 CSSHL U18 MVP award as a U16 player and it should be expected she does the same thing this year after leading the league in scoring by 28 points.
Then of course there was those two weeks spent in Switzerland at the U18 World Championships where Primerano set the record for most points by a defender and Canadian in a single tournament, was named MVP of the tournament, named to the tournament All-Star Team, named Best Defender, earned a Bronze Medal, and is second in tournament history for most points in a single tournament. With a year of U18 eligibility left Primerano will be joining the NCAA and the University of Minnesota as a U18 player which is an extremely rare occurrence.
Movie Recommendation: Going to try and stay away from the movies that everyone recommends often already otherwise what would be the point of this part of the article? Problem is I’m not, as the kids say, hip with it nowadays so I might recommend a movie that’s actually super popular and I don’t know it. Either way this article’s movie recommendation is The Book of Life (2014). If you liked Pixar’s Coco this is kind of in the same vein and is powered by the voices of Diego Luna, Ron Perlman, Channing Tatum, Zoe Saldana, and Kate del Castillo. It’s fun for all ages and the family. The music is stellar and the art style is very unique but I honestly thought it had a lot of charm. If you give it a try I hope you enjoy it!
