Following up our offseason analysis of the 2024-25 men's team (which you can read here), we still have some time to burn before the start of the season, and as of writing this, Brown still hasn't released schedules for either team so there's still a lot to look back on before we inevitably look forward.

Skipping to the end a bit, this was the best year so far for head coach Melanie Ruzzi and her team. Last season was the first time since the 2005-06 season under legendary former head coach Digit Murphy that the Pandas finished above .500, with an overall record of 14-13-3 (.517), following a very clear linear trend of upward growth since her first season at Brown.

So let's break down how we got here.

Preseason

The 2023-24 season featured Brown's best finish in years, finishing 8th in league standings, earning their first 1st round home game in several years, which was a thrilling 1-0 overtime victory over RPI thanks to overtime hero Jess Ciarrocchi. Unfortunately the Quarterfinal round wouldn't swing our way, as Brown was swept by #4 Colgate with both games ending up 5-1. But again at the time, this was Brown's best result in years, and even with the departure of key pieces like goaltender Kaley Doyle (who went to Quinnipiac for her grad year after walking through the Van Wickle Gates), Brown would be ranked 8th in the Preseason ECAC Poll, little did they know, they would be completely correct in that prediction, but the ride to a consecutive 8th place finish would have a lot of interesting moments.

The 6-0 run

Say what you will about October/November hockey, yes everyone is still getting their bearings, and sometimes you don't see a lot of very good hockey, but there's always that one team that comes flying out the gates, and it's never the one that you expect. This year, it was Brown, who after warming up with a 6-0 exhibition win over McGill University, went on a freaking tear. The season started with a home and home against Franklin Pierce, and the goals were flying on both nights, with 8-1 and 6-2 victories at Meehan Auditorium, but the real test was about to arrive.

The following weekend was the start of ECAC action against Quinnipiac and Princeton, and any other year, you might expect a hot team like this to get humbled in this tough league. But Brown didn't back down, instead they beat #9 Quinnipiac 2-1 in Overtime and then broke through #11/13 Princeton in a thrilling 4-3 regulation victory to start ECAC play. After beating Princeton, Brown had earned a spot in the USCHO Women's Hockey rankings, for the first time since October of 2006 (again under coach Digit Murphy), Brown was nationally ranked at #15. This would give the Bears solid momentum to approach a road trip through New England to play Dartmouth and Harvard.

The Big Green had an awful start to the season going 0-5, and so they were close to breaking through by scoring first in that first game of the weekend, but it wouldn't take too long for Brown to equalize off of a Power Play goal, before securing the victory with a late Power Play goal in the third period (fun fact all of the goals in this game were on the advantage). Brown won and happily moved on south to Cambridge, which leads us to talk about the Harvard Crimson.

To say that Harvard is going through hell right now is an understatement due to the organizational changes and scandals from their coaching group, but they didn't have too bad of an early season, beating one of the best teams of the country UConn 1-0, and winning 5-1 over Yale. Little did anyone know, those would be the only games Harvard would win that season.

The start of what would be a thrilling 5-1 victory for the Brown Bears

I was lucky to attend this Saturday game in person, and the first period was decently close. India McDadi would score first off the power play, and five minutes later Harvard's Gwynn Lapp would tie the game at 1. After the Bears came out of the locker room for the second, everything changed. Brown started the second period on a power play and after only 17 seconds in the period the freshman phenom Monique Lyons would score her first goal of the game off of another power play, and the Crimson slowly started falling apart after that. Jess Ciarrocchi would score shorthanded with 7 seconds left in Harvard's power play, and Abby Hancock would score her first goal as a Panda from the blue line to end the second period. With the result already more than secured, Monique Lyons would notch one final goal in the third period with less than six minutes. Rory Edwards had a stellar performance this game with 20 shots saved out of 21. Brown topped off this 6-0 run on what felt like the top of the world. (And I got a puck from the game during a stoppage! Thanks Mel Ruzzi!)

This weekend was a landmark result for the Brown Bears in many ways, most notably that it earned Brown a higher spot in the USCHO rankings, #14. This 6-0 start was the best start for the Bears since the 1992-93 season. Needless to say, this was a statement performance from Brown to start the year. Brown was making large strides.

November/December: The ECAC got HANDS, Hockey East doesn't

I wish I could say that the rest of November went as well as it started for Brown, but this conference is tough for a reason. Brown would struggle for most of the month, losing in overtime to Colgate and then losing to Cornell, Yale, Clarkson, before finally tying with St. Lawrence (although the Saints won the shootout, whatever). Here we would see some experimentation in net as Anya Zupkofska would trade places with Rory Edwards throughout the month, something that would become a bit of a theme for the season.

Brown would end the month of November with the annual fight for the Mayor's Cup at Providence College. Now, as someone whose attention is also on Hockey East because of BU, I thought that this would be a really good opportunity for Brown to prove its growth. I'll be blunt, a lot of the Hockey East teams were not good this year, and Providence College at that point was alright, coming into the game with a 7-7-3 record. So it seemed that this Mayor's Cup match would be pretty evenly matched, and it absolutely was. Brown would get a 2-0 lead in the first period off of goals from Jess Ciarrocchi and Monique Lyons, courtesy of a very strong forechecking effort, and it would take most of the second period for the Friars to come back and tie the game, setting up what could've been a nail-biter of a third period, which India McDadi almost immediately broke by scoring 39 seconds in the final frame off an insane personal effort from the Captain Jade Iginla. When the final buzzer sounded, this group accomplished something not done in a decade and brought the Mayor's Cup back to College Hill, a well-deserved and hard-fought effort led to another accolade for this group. The following day, Brown would ride the high of silverware to easily beat Holy Cross 4-1, good results against the two Hockey East teams.

The rest of December however wasn't much to write home about with consecutive 4-1 losses out in Upstate New York against RPI and Union. There's always room for improvement.

The Minnesota Showcase

Brown would begin 2025 with a trip to Minneapolis to participate in the Minnesota Showcase, a two game experience against some tough WCHA opponents. First up was the University of Minnesota, a Goliath of a program that immediately outmatched Brown, ending the day with an exhausting 9-1 loss. Talk about character development. The next day should've gone a lot better, with Brown taking on Bemidji State and getting a 4-1 lead through 25 minutes of play but that lead slowly got chipped away as a result of penalties taken by the Pandas, and thus Hailey Armstrong tied the game up at 4 a piece at the beginning of the third period, before then getting the excruciating game winner in the final minute of the match. This really could've gone a lot better but I think this trip as a whole was an important chance for Brown to face tougher competition that it normally wouldn't get outside of the best teams in the ECAC, a lot was learned here that's for sure.

January/February

The non-conference slate would end with a visit from the Sacred Heart Pioneers on January 8th, which Brown was able to beat 3-0, earning Rory Edwards her first career shutout with the help of two goals from Monique Lyons (are you noticing how many times her name has appeared so far?). The Minnesota trip, while disappointing, had immediate returns as Brown would show a lot of ferocity in hard-earned victories throughout most of January. In particular, Brown would take a trip to the North Country of Upstate New York and defeat both St. Lawrence and Clarkson (doesn't that sound familiar?), with Monique Lyons being the Overtime Hero in St. Lawrence with a freaking Hat Trick, and India McDadi winning the Clarkson game in Overtime. Brown would continue the road trip the following weekend, tying against Princeton (but winning the shootout 1-0, so I guess it's a sweep?), and tying 0-0 against Quinnipiac (before losing in the longest shootout of my damn life with Quinnipiac winning 6-5). The month of January would end with a 2-1 loss against Union College, with the Garnet Chargers seeming to make late-season moves in spite of the preseason poll saying they would finish dead last.

It's at this point that the question of the Playoffs appears, and we would be holding our breath until the last moment to see whether Brown could go consecutive years with a home game in the first round of the ECAC Playoffs, thankfully Brown was able to secure this before the final weekend of the regular season. Brown would beat RPI 4-3 at home, and the following weekend would see Brown complete the season sweep against both Harvard and Dartmouth. Rory Edwards would earn her second shutout as a Panda against Dartmouth with a 3-0 result, and that exciting Dartmouth game was when Brown clinched the 8th seed and another first round game at Meehan Auditorium. The final two games of the regular season would unfortunately be losses against Cornell and Colgate, who were both well on their way to not just going far in the ECAC playoffs, but make a decent run in the NCAA Tournament as well.

The ECAC Tournament: A Garnet Colored Brick Wall

Remember Union? They were picked to be dead-last in the preseason polls, but they were able to finish with the 9th seed in the playoffs and so got the opportunity to play Brown in the First Round at Meehan Auditorium. I had a lot of high hopes for this game, and if the equivalent of the Deserve-To-Win Meter existed for college hockey, I think Brown would've had the majority especially as the Pandas would outshoot Union 35-25. But because of some penalty trouble, Union would score first in the second period, and Brown was just unable to get a shot past Union goaltender Sophie Matsoukas, and with the net empty, Union would seal the deal at the end of the third period, winning 2-0 and moving on to the Quarterfinals. Thus ending the season for Brown.

Aftermath: Can We Get Much Higher?

At the end of the 2023-24 campaign, I was very excited to see Brown make bigger strides, it was very clear that Coach Mel Ruzzi was dedicated to taking the team higher with each year, and she was able to prove that to the country. A year later, I have a feeling that this past season has truly lit a fire inside Meehan Auditorium, finishing above .500 for the first time in DECADES is an achievement that cannot be overlooked, and I wholeheartedly refuse to believe that it will be a fluke. Getting nationally recognized in the USCHO and USA Hockey rankings, winning the Mayor's Cup for the first time since 2014, and facing adversity in the form of the Minnesota Showcase should (hopefully) steel the resolve of the entire team to do even better in the 2025-26 season, but that's a story for another day.

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