Courtney Kessel in final discussions to take over as Princeton women's hockey coach, AP sources say
Boston Fleet coach Courtney Kessel is in final discussions to take over as women's hockey coach at Princeton, two people with knowledge of talks told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
The people spoke to the on the condition of anonymity because Kessel's hiring is not complete and the process could take weeks to finalize.
The move would be a homecoming for Kessel, who previously served as an assistant at Princeton under Cara Gardner Morey. She would succeed Gardner Morey, who left the Tigers in May upon being hired as general manager of the PWHL's expansion team in Vancouver.
Kessel's ties to Princeton played a major role in her decision to pursue the job. The choice to leave the PWHL was considered a difficult one for the 35-year-old, who is proud of the relationships she formed with staff and players in helping launch the Fleet. She had a 27-19-8 record with the franchise.
Boston reached the Walter Cup finals last year in its inaugural season, where it lost a decisive Game 5 to Minnesota. This season, the Fleet missed the playoffs by the slimmest of margins.
From Toronto, Kessel played at New Hampshire, where she was a 2010 finalist for the Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award, given to the MVP of women's college hockey. She also represented Canada at three world championships, including a gold-medal win in 2012.
After four years as an assistant at Princeton, Kessel served as associate head coach at Boston University in 2023-24 before being hired as the Fleet's first coach.
The Fleet have undergone major changes this offseason. Star forward Hilary Knight left Boston to sign with the PWHL's expansion team in Seattle. The Fleet also have an opening at assistant general manager after Meghan Turner was hired as Seattle's GM.
The PWHL will now have three coaching vacancies, with Seattle and Vancouver having yet to fill their positions.
Princeton's program flourished during Gardner Morey's eight seasons as coach. The Tigers won their first Eastern College Athletic Conference tournament title in 2020 as part of a school-record 26-win season.
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Hindustan Times
20 hours ago
- Hindustan Times
Courtney Kessel in final discussions to take over as Princeton women's hockey coach, AP sources say
Boston Fleet coach Courtney Kessel is in final discussions to take over as women's hockey coach at Princeton, two people with knowledge of talks told The Associated Press on Tuesday. The people spoke to the on the condition of anonymity because Kessel's hiring is not complete and the process could take weeks to finalize. The move would be a homecoming for Kessel, who previously served as an assistant at Princeton under Cara Gardner Morey. She would succeed Gardner Morey, who left the Tigers in May upon being hired as general manager of the PWHL's expansion team in Vancouver. Kessel's ties to Princeton played a major role in her decision to pursue the job. The choice to leave the PWHL was considered a difficult one for the 35-year-old, who is proud of the relationships she formed with staff and players in helping launch the Fleet. She had a 27-19-8 record with the franchise. Boston reached the Walter Cup finals last year in its inaugural season, where it lost a decisive Game 5 to Minnesota. This season, the Fleet missed the playoffs by the slimmest of margins. From Toronto, Kessel played at New Hampshire, where she was a 2010 finalist for the Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award, given to the MVP of women's college hockey. She also represented Canada at three world championships, including a gold-medal win in 2012. After four years as an assistant at Princeton, Kessel served as associate head coach at Boston University in 2023-24 before being hired as the Fleet's first coach. The Fleet have undergone major changes this offseason. Star forward Hilary Knight left Boston to sign with the PWHL's expansion team in Seattle. The Fleet also have an opening at assistant general manager after Meghan Turner was hired as Seattle's GM. The PWHL will now have three coaching vacancies, with Seattle and Vancouver having yet to fill their positions. Princeton's program flourished during Gardner Morey's eight seasons as coach. The Tigers won their first Eastern College Athletic Conference tournament title in 2020 as part of a school-record 26-win season. women's hockey: /hub/womens-hockey
Hindustan Times
10-06-2025
- Hindustan Times
Women's hockey is on the rise in Pacific Northwest, with young girls excited about PWHL's arrival
SEATTLE — Elly Garcia-Dudek can't help but gaze out toward the ice during hockey practices at the Kraken Community Iceplex. The 12-year-old Garcia-Dudek is a big fan of women's national team stars like Hilary Knight, who starred for the Boston Fleet of the Professional Women's Hockey League last season. Pretty soon, Garcia-Dudek – who started playing through the Seattle Kraken's Learn to Play program — won't have to look across the country for role models like Knight. The PWHL is expanding to Vancouver and to Seattle next season, which was music to Garcia-Dudek's ears. She and her family are Kraken fans and have already put down deposits for PWHL Seattle season tickets. Luckily for Garcia-Dudek, Knight has agreed to play in Seattle. 'It's really inspiring and cool to watch them play because it's different from the men's game because women aren't used to playing with contact, but they get to with the PWHL, which is really cool to watch,' Garcia-Dudek said. 'It inspires me personally like, 'Oh, I can be one of them when I grow up.'' Seattle's lineup should feature plenty of offense from the outset, especially with Knight — a four-time Olympian and PWHL MVP finalist last season — on the scene. 'Hillary is a superstar in every way, right?" Seattle GM Meghan Turner said of Knight after the PWHL expansion draft. 'Like she plays the way she plays, the way she carries herself in the locker room, the way that she carries herself outside the rink. She's just really got at all.' The Pacific Northwest expansion will give the PWHL eight teams and its first two west of Minnesota. The moves are expected to spur even more interest across the region in hockey, which has steadily grown especially in Seattle since the arrival of the Kraken in 2021. When Martin Hlinka began his tenure as director of the Kraken Youth Hockey Association in April 2021, they had just 72 players across six teams. The KYHA now has 39 boys and girls teams, including a 14U Jr Kraken team that Garcia-Dudek will play on this year. Hlinka credits this growth in large part to the Kraken's presence. 'The growth was great because more kids watch games on TV or in-person,' Hlinka said, 'and they have a better interest and they're excited to be part of it.' The expectation on Hlinka's end is that the addition of PWHL Seattle will only further increase Seattle's intrigue in hockey at the youth level. The sport has already taken sizable steps forward, though, over the last few decades. Since 2014-15, there's been an increase of 1,744 more youth hockey players in Washington. And since 2021-22, when the Kraken began play, an additional 268 kids have started playing in the state. The growth has been observed by Julia Takatsuka, a goalie coordinator for the Jr Kraken who grew up playing hockey in the Seattle suburb of Lynnwood. When she was a kid, Takatsuka said, she had to travel to Canada every weekend for tournaments, and that practice rinks were relatively spartan compared to the Iceplex, which boasts three rinks and was built in September 2021. 'I would have loved to train at a place like where we have all of the actual things we need,' Takatsuka said. 'I was a goalie, so we need pegs to hold the nets down. I didn't have that. We have that now. We have ice that has real creases for the goalies. Didn't have that growing up, either.' The Seattle area requires more work and time to become a women's hockey hotbed, though. As Hlinka pointed out, there is only so much ice time to go around, and there aren't nearly as many rinks in Seattle as there are in cities like Vancouver or Toronto. Still, there's clear evidence women's hockey has already grown in Seattle. The women's club hockey team at the University of Washington played its inaugural season in 2021. This has allowed Regan Thomas, a West Seattle native and student at Washington, to continue playing the sport she adores. It wasn't until she went to boarding school in New Hampshire that Thomas even became aware she could play hockey. Soccer was Thomas's spot of choice as a kid, and she had quite the role model in Megan Rapinoe, the national team standout who starred for Seattle Reign FC for a decade. Though Thomas wishes Seattle could have had a pro women's hockey team when she was a kid, such won't be the case for countless young girls in the Pacific Northwest moving forward. 'I think having those role models is incredibly important,' Thomas said. 'I find myself even now like 'Ugh, I wish this was around 10 years ago.' Because not that I would have ever made it, but just kind of the dream of making it – you figure out how to push yourself harder.' Lindsay Skogmo's son, Otto, already has plenty of role models whenever he shows up to KCI for practice with the 8-and-under Jr Kraken team. When Skogmo was recently at her son's school, she heard rumblings from girls about how hockey wasn't for them. Skogmo hopes pro women's hockey in Seattle will inspire young girls like Garcia-Dudek to keep dreaming big. 'I feel like in this world right now, in our country, a lot of females feel like it's not going good for us, or it's going against us,' Skogmo said. 'So, for us to be able to get a professional female team here really gives a lot of girl power.' women's hockey: /hub/womens-hockey
Hindustan Times
06-06-2025
- Hindustan Times
Hilary Knight eager to introduce PWHL and women's hockey to her new team in Seattle
As Hilary Knight winds down her international career, the four-time Olympian and long-time face of U.S. women's hockey is hardly done making inroads in her sport. Next up for the 35-year-old during a trailblazing career — in which she stood up to USA Hockey in demanding better wages and helped found the PWHL — is introducing the women's game to a new frontier as part of the league's expansion into the Pacific Northwest. 'Yeah, I guess it's sort of how my career's gone. I'm more of a builder in many ways,' Knight said with a laugh on Friday, two days after becoming the first player agreeing to sign with the PWHL's new team in Seattle. 'Ecstatic. It's an incredible honor to be part of this group and to have this opportunity. I think it's pivotal, it's important,' added the PWHL MVP finalist. 'And to have a hand in that at the ground level is an extreme honor.' And don't be fooled by Knight agreeing to sign a one-year deal. Though she's already announced the 2026 Winter Games will be her fifth and final Olympics, Knight said she is committed to continuing her pro career in Seattle beyond the PWHL's third season. 'The term doesn't really reflect my commitment or my promise to what we want to build and be a part of in the city of Seattle,' she said. The additions of Seattle and Vancouver grow the league to eight teams, and expands the PWHL's reach fully across the continent. In switching coasts, Knight bids farewell to her longtime ties to Boston, which go well beyond the two years she spent serving as captain of the PWHL Fleet. Before her college days at Wisconsin, Knight attended a prep school in New England, and later spent six years playing in Boston for its CWHL and NWHL franchises. Seattle brings Knight much closer to her offseason home in Sun Valley, Idaho, and to where she's enjoyed several fond memories. The foremost came in 2022, when she was wowed by the 14,551 fans inside the NHL Kraken's arena for a U.S.-Canada Rivalry Series game. And she was back in the same arena in January with 12,608 fans on hand to watch Boston play Montreal to open the PWHL's nine-game neutral-site Takeover Tour series. 'When the league announced that Seattle was gonna be an expansion franchise, I was like, 'Oh, my gosh, whoever has an opportunity to get out there, it's just going to be an amazing setup and wonderful fan base,'' Knight said. 'I think things aligned for me personally in the right way. And I cannot wait for puck drop.' Knight is coming off a stellar season in which her 29 points were tied for the league lead with New York rookie Sarah Fillier. She also captained the U.S. to win its 11th gold medal and her 10th at the women's world championships in April. Knight will already have some familiar faces joining her in Seattle, following the signings of U.S. national team members Cayla Barnes and Alex Carpenter. The 31-year-old Carpenter agreed to a one-year contract on Friday. She spent her first two seasons in New York and ranks third on the PWHL career list with 43 points in 50 games. Seattle filled out its fourth and fifth spots with Ottawa forward Danielle Serdachny and goaltender Corinne Schroeder, who signed a two-year contract. The all-time PWHL leader in shutouts spent the past two seasons with New York. The signing period runs through Sunday followed by both teams filling out their rosters to 12 players in the expansion draft on Monday. All eight teams will then take part in the PWHL draft on June 24. Knight reflected on how upon finishing college in 2012 there were few options for women to continue pursing hockey careers outside of their respective national teams. The CWHL didn't pay its players salaries, while the NWHL did but endured several hiccups and was eventually bought out to establish the PWHL in 2023. 'We all wanted this 20, 30, 100 years ago,' Knight said of the PWHL. 'I'm just so grateful for all the people that came before us to be able to have this league,' she added. 'I think we're in really good hands with where we started Year 1 and where we're going. And what an amazing hit out of the park to be able to expand in Year 3.' women's hockey: /hub/womens-hockey
