The Wildcats have a path to success cut out for them. Can they execute it?
The University of New Hampshire Wildcats may be much more dangerous than they appear. Do not let these kitties into your home. Do not pet them. Their teeth and claws are sharp.
They’ve got the pieces: a stable and experienced goaltending tandem between rising seniors Sedona Blair (.926 save percentage across 20 games played; 7-10-3 record, including one shutout) and Noemi Martinez (.927 save percentage across 16 games played; 9-6-0 record, including two shutouts) as well as most of their highest scorers from last season.
But it will come down to the execution for New Hampshire.
Last season, the Wildcats let in the third-highest number of goals in the conference but also scored the fourth-most; in the country, they scored the 16th-highest goals per game on average (2.83). They were also the second-most-penalized team in Hockey East with 135, but their penalty kill success rate was 81.45%. On the other side of that, their power play success rate was the best in the conference at 21.77%, good enough for 12th in the country.
If their goaltending can stabilize and they can continue scoring goals at a high clip, New Hampshire could become a very dangerous school to face.
In the pre-season poll, the Wildcats were picked to finish seventh, accruing 42 points in the poll, 12 points behind the University of Vermont.
Where last season ended…
New Hampshire finished with a .500 overall record: 16-16-3. Their conference record was slightly worse off, percentage-wise, 10-12-2.
The Wildcats were knocked out of the Hockey East playoffs by Holy Cross in the quarterfinal round.
Players to watch…
Rising sophomore forward Nina Rossi (14 goals and 20 assists in 35 games) was tied for fourth as the conference’s top point scorer and was third among freshmen. Four of her goals were on the power play. The Wildcats’ next-highest-scoring player last season was rising senior forward Danika Botterill (12 goals and 16 assists in 35 games).
New arrivals..
The Wildcats have added five freshmen to their roster for the 2025-26 season: three forwards and two defenders.
There are no incoming transfers for the Wildcats.
Into the portal…
New Hampshire lost only one player to the transfer portal: rising sophomore defender Alex Thierien (one goal and six assists in 36 games), who will be skating for St. Lawrence this season.
A peek into the schedule…
The Wildcats will play their first four games of the season on the road. Opening things up at St. Thomas on Sep. 25 and 26, the Wildcats were swept. New Hampshire will then move on to Long Island University on Oct. 2 and 3. They’ll make their home debut against Boston University on Oct. 9 and will face Northeastern at Walter Brown Arena on Sunday, Oct. 11. Blessedly, there will be a short respite from conference action until the end of the month, as they play a series against St. Lawrence and one-offs against Stonehill and Harvard, and then visit Lawler Rink for a series against Merrimack on Oct. 30 and 31.
From the Merrimack series to the mid-season break, the Wildcats will be playing only Hockey East opponents. For the purposes of conference point-getting, those opponents couldn’t be better for New Hampshire: aside from a series against Holy Cross on Nov. 19 and 20, the Wildcats will be facing off against all of the lower-ranked teams in the conference.
The second half of the season starts with a series against RIT on Jan. 1 and 2; this will be the last time New Hampshire has an out-of-conference matchup, and it may be one of the last times they have an easy go of it. From there, the Wildcats are looking down the barrel at higher-ranked conference opponents like Boston University, Northeastern, Boston College, UConn and Holy Cross.
There are two lighter conference games in the latter half of their season: a match against Merrimack on Feb. 12 and their regular-season closer against Providence on Feb. 20.
By the time the Hockey East playoffs roll around, the Wildcats will have the advantage of having recently faced the top teams, thus having more of a sense of how they should face their opponents in the offseason.
