Six Current And Former Eagles Claim IIHF Women’s World Championship Gold With Team USA

After Thursday night’s Eagle-splosion in the IIHF Women’s World Championship semifinals against Germany, you would have liked to see some more Eagles on the score sheet in the gold medal game against Canada.

While no Eagles tallied points against the Canadians, they made their presence felt in other ways — from current junior Kali Flanagan coolly defending all-world superstar Marie-Philip Poulin one-on-one, to Kelli Stack dancing around Canadian defenders like old times on the Heights. All six Eagles saw significant minutes and helped lead the Americans to a 3-2 OT win for the World Championship, their 7th in the last 8 tournaments, and the last before the 2018 Olympics.

Sixty minutes weren’t enough to decide who would take home the gold, and the two teams went to overtime tied at two.

Halfway through the overtime period, Wisconsin’s Hilary Knight and Northeastern’s Kendall Coyne jump-started one of the fastest defensive zone breakouts you’ll ever see.

Coyne burned down the ice and fed Knight, before Knight let loose with a bar-down nuke job that no one was going to stop.

The whole overtime period was something to behold, and it would have been a heartbreaker to lose. But the six Eagles,

#16 Kelli Stack ‘11 (F),
#8 Emily Pfalzer ‘15 (D),
#25 Alex Carpenter ‘16 (F),
#11 Haley Skarupa ‘16 (F),
#6 Kali Flanagan ‘18 (D), and
#5 Megan Keller ‘18 (D)

will head home happy with a shiny new piece of hardware to show off.

Congratulations to the Eagles, and to Team USA — now it’s time to get that elusive Olympic gold next year in Pyeongchang!