Four Eagles Will Represent Team USA Women’s Hockey In The 2018 Olympics

Fresh off a dominating effort in the 2017 IIHF Women’s World Championships, Team USA announced today it’s 23-player roster for the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea.

Four Eagles — two alumnae and two current students — made the final cut, and will centralize with Team USA for the upcoming year to train full-time in the lead up to the Olympics.

They are:

#8 Emily Pfalzer ‘15 (D)
#25 Alex Carpenter ‘16 (F)
#6 Kali Flanagan ‘19* (D)
#5 Megan Keller ‘19* (D)

*Flanagan and Keller were both members of the class of 2018, but will take a redshirt for the upcoming season before returning to BC for their senior year in 2018-2019.

This is the first Olympic appearance for Pfalzer, Flanagan, and Keller, while Carpenter was a member of the silver medal-winning squad in Sochi.

Boston College is the only school to have two current players on the Team USA roster — Duluth, Minnesota, and Wisconsin each have one.

With Flanagan and Keller both taking a year off, it’ll be next-woman-up for the Eagles in the 2017-2018 season. BC struggled to find enough bodies for the blue line last year (for a number of reasons), but the return of Toni Ann Miano from suspension and the addition of incoming freshman Cayla Barnes (who nearly made the Olympic roster herself despite only being in high school) should help keep the Eagles at the top of Hockey East.

That sets the Eagles up to be pretty nasty once the Olympians return for the 2018-2019 season.

Team USA hasn’t won gold in the Olympics since 1998, the first year that the Games included the sport. Canada has won all four gold medals since then, despite the United States taking a whopping 7 of the last 8 IIHF World Championships.

Congratulations to all four Eagles — hopefully they can bring Olympic gold to the Heights!