Back On The Ice

Have you ever heard of Violet Palmer?

Is her name familiar? How about Kelly Cooke's?

Kelly Cooke, of the Princeton Class of 2013, was a four-time All-ECAC Academic selection in women's hockey.

She was also the Tiger captain as a senior. As a junior, she was named the team's most improved player, and she followed that a year later by being named team MVP.

After graduation she  became a professional hockey player. And now? She is one of the top referees in the women's game.

And possibly the men's game at some point?

There have been women refs in the NBA since 2006, when, if you guessed correctly, Violet Palmer  became the first female to officiate a regular season game. The NHL has not yet allowed that to happen, but the time is coming.

And Cooke could be the ref.

She has already refereed NHL men in preseason scrimmages. And this past weekend, she was part of the NHL's All-Star weekend in St. Louis, where she officiated the U.S. vs. Canada women's all-star showcase.

Being the first woman to do anything that has traditionally been all-male is not easy. It would be great to see Cooke get the chance.

Sarah Thomas, by the way, was the first woman to officiate in the NFL, something she did in the 2015 season. Before that she was the first woman to officiate in a college bowl game and in the Big Ten.

As far as TigerBlog can tell, no woman has ever umpired a Major League Baseball regular season game. Pam Postema did work Major League exhibition games and spent 13 years working in the Minors, and she wrote about her experiences, and frustration with the lack of promotion to the Majors, in what was a relatively interestingly titled book.

Anyway, Cook's college team plays tonight for the first time since the break for exams, which means the Tigers will be on the ice for the first time in 17 days. Most recently Princeton was at Dartmouth and Harvard for a three-point weekend.

Princeton is at Quinnipiac tonight, with face-off in Hamden at 6.

Right now Princeton is in fourth place in the ECAC, which brings with it a home series in the first round of the playoffs next month.

As is always the case this time of year, the standings are a bit bunched throughout. Cornell is in first with 26 points, followed by Harvard at 21 and then three more teams - Clarkson, Princeton and Yale - all within three.

It drops back to 15 for sixth-place Colgate, as the teams chase home ice. Teams need to be in the top eight to get into the postseason, and after Colgate you have Union, Quinnipiac and St. Lawrence with 13 or 12 each. From there it's Dartmouth with seven points in 10th place, so you can pretty much see how it's all shaping up.

Princeton has nine regular season games left, with five away and four at home. The next three, starting tonight, are on the road, with a trip to Yale and Brown scheduled for this weekend. It's the first of two meetings between Princeton and those two, and keep in mind that Princeton is one up on Yale right now.

Princeton is also ranked sixth in the country as the team looks for a second-straight trip to the NCAA tournament.

When you talk about Princeton, you of course talk about sophomore Sarah Fillier, who has 13 goals and 21 assists for 34 points. She ranks second in Division I in points per game and third in assists per game, and she is threat to do something spectacular every time she's on the ice.

Her classmate Maggie Connors leads the team with 15 goals and ranks fourth in Division I in goals per game.

In addition, there are other Princeton players who are moving up career lists. From the preview story:
Among Tigers climbing program record lists, senior Claire Thompson has climbed to fifth place on the program's list for career points by a defenseman with 78, 13 back of Laura Watt '07 (91) for fourth. Classmate Carly Bullock's 79 career goals stand seventh on the program's list, eight back of Gretchen Anderson '04 (87) for sixth. Fellow senior Steph Neatby's 11 career shutouts are good for fourth all-time, two back of Rebecca Potter '83 (13) and three behind Rebecca Young '09 and Rachel Weber '12 (14) for the record. Neatby's 1,746 career saves have her closing in Weber's 1,787 for fifth on the program's all-time list.

You can read the whole story HERE.

There will be a lot of women's hockey played by Princeton in the next several weeks. Will Princeton get home ice in the postseason? Will Princeton return to the NCAAs?

Those questions start to get answered tonight.