Max Steigauf / Sports Director / @MSteigauf

With Ohio State winning NCAA Women’s Hockey Championship last weekend. Now is a good time to take a look back at the Huskies outstanding 2023-24 season.

Lotta Hype Lotta Results!

The Huskies entered this past season riding a high wave of hype after a turnaround season in Head Coach Brian Idalski’s first season. St. Cloud was returning quite a bit of players while also bringing in new talent in new freshman and transfers. All of those new faces paid off too with three of the top five scorers for the Huskies being new to the team (Katie Kaufman 6-16-22, CC Bowlby 6-10-16, Alice Sauriol 6-10-16)

The Huskies got results right away too opening the season beating Union College 6-1 and 4-0. The 6-1 opening day win was tied for the most goals since their 2015 opening game against Merrimack.

The Huskies finished the season with three hat tricks which is second most in program history. (Klara Hymlarova, Greta Henderson, Emma Gentry) only the 2009-10 season had more with four hat tricks.

St. Cloud achieved its highest ever rank in program history on Dec. 8 earning the #7 rank. The Huskies also were ranked the entire season for the first time in program history.

It’s also worth noting that the last two national champions (Ohio State and Wisconsin) have lost to St. Cloud at home during their national championship seasons.

The Huskies finished the season with a 17-17-2 record which means for the second straight year St. Cloud has a .500 winning percentage. This is the first time in program history the Huskies have finished two years with .500 or better records.

Goalies or Walls?

The Huskies knew they had good goalies heading into this past season with Jojo Chobak and Sanni Ahola splitting time this season again.

Ahola Started the season on fire with her first four games she had four shutouts! That was not only the longest shutout streak to start a season for SCSU but also the longest shutout streak in a season. Ahola would end the season with a 10-6-1 record, a .935 save percentage, 1.7 GAA and five shutouts. Which netted her a WCHA first team nod.

Jojo Chobak was equally dominant for the Huskies. Chobak only giving up 3 or more goals in three games. She ended the season with a 7-11-1 record with 4 shutouts and .939 save percentage and 1.69 GAA.

Transitive Property

The Huskies had a lot of transfers this year and no one knew just what to expect from the veteran players. Turns out they were crucial for this past year’s run. In total St. Cloud’s transfers had 25 goals 54 assists and 79 points which accounted for nearly 38% of all of the Huskies scoring.

Leading the way for the transfer group was Katie Kaufman who went 6-16-22 and was tied for the team lead in assists. Kaufman was also second on the team in scoring.

Another promising transfer was the young Avery Farrell. Farrell totaled seven goals and seven assists for 14 points as a sophomore. Farrell will definitely be a key part of the Huskies plans in the future.

Rookie Results

For as many veterans as the Huskies had the rookies for SCSU also played massive roles for the team.

Alice Sauriol led the group scoring six goals and ten assists. Other big first time performers were Laura Zimmerman (4-6-10) Sofianna Sundelin (1-7-8) and Greta Henderson (4-3-7) who also scored a hat trick against the Bemidji State Beavers.

Not to mention some big freshman names chose to rather take a redshirt season. Players like Grace Delmonico and Marie Moran.

With those performances combined with some of the players who took redshirts Husky fans should feel very secure about the future of the program.