Merrimack Warriors women's ice hockey

History

The Merrimack Warriors women's ice hockey team first took the ice in the 2013–14 school year as a club team in the American Collegiate Hockey Association. They moved up to NCAA Division I competition in 2015–16 and joined Hockey East. The program, along with new women's swimming and water polo teams, was added as part of a six-sport expansion. This followed a settlement with the U.S. Department of Education over a Title IX gender-discrimination complaint, and the ice hockey team now offers scholarships.

Erin Whitten Hamlen has been the Warriors' head coach from the very start. She was a standout goaltender at the University of New Hampshire, where she won the ECAC Goaltender of the Year award in 1992. After her playing days, she returned to UNH as an assistant and later associate head coach from 2000 to 2010. In 2010, she became the first head coach of the Boston Blades in the Canadian Women's Hockey League.

For Merrimack's first NCAA season, her assistant coach was Kacey Bellamy, a two-time Olympic silver medalist with the U.S. Women's National Team. Hamlen had previously coached Bellamy at UNH, with Team USA, and with the Boston Blades. While working at Merrimack, Bellamy also played for the Boston Pride of the National Women's Hockey League, which won the league's first Isobel Cup championship in the 2015–16 season. After that season, she left to train with the national team for the IIHF World Women's Championship.

The Warriors were picked to finish eighth out of nine teams in the 2017–18 Hockey East preseason poll. They surprised everyone by opening the season with two upset wins. The first was against Boston University, which was ranked third in the conference. The second was a 4–3 road victory over No. 3 Minnesota.

Goaltender Léa-Kristine Demers made 54 saves in the September 29 win, which was the first time the Warriors had ever beaten a nationally ranked opponent. Minnesota took the second game of that series, 4–1. Merrimack ended the 2017–18 season with an 11–20–3 overall record and a 6–16–2 mark in conference play, placing ninth and missing the Hockey East tournament.