With the Stanley Cup finals still being contested in the last days of spring, the 2013-14 hockey season has started already for Team USA women up in Lake Placid. Two players with strong NHL bloodlines will become household names if USA wins the gold in Sochi 8 months from now.
Barely two months after teaming up for USA’s historic gold medal at the women’s World Championship in Ottawa, Amanda Kessel and Alex Carpenter are among America’s best 40 players fighting for their Olympic lives, a three hour drive from where they defeated Canada. Their first scrimmage was played under game conditions with international refs and white hot speed and intensity. The few dozen fans that wandered into Herb Brooks Arena saw a level of women’s hockey that has only been played once or twice, ever.
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| Golden Girl Amanda Kessel |
“I don’t think it’s much different than playing Canada, us playing us,” said scoring star Kessel.
“It was quick, very quick,” said Carpenter. “People making smart plays. It was a good representation of how Canada is going to be.”
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| Alex Carpenter Dangling in Danvers |
Carpenter just finished a dynamic sophomore year at Boston College. She talks, walks and plays like her old man, the former “Can’t Miss Kid” Bobby Carpenter of NHL fame. A product of Boston’s north shore, they are New England hockey royalty.
Her linemate at the World Championships was Amanda Kessel, who is a Midwest legend, raised in Wisconsin and schooled in Minnesota, leading the Golden Gophers to new heights. She grew up playing fierce shinny games against her two brothers on the frozen ponds, Blake (a minor league defenseman in the Flyers organization) and the better know Phil, who is recovering from a broken heart after the Leafs first round collapse against the Bruins.
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| Brother Phil Falls Short in Beantown |
“I didn’t go,” said Amanda, “But I saw it, kept up with it. Yeah, I was bummed out that they (the Leafs) lost, I was disappointed myself.” Amanda, in contrast to Phil, had the best season a women’s player has ever had, leading the Gophers to an undefeated record, winning the NCAA’s and the Patty Kazmaier award as best player, and then scoring the Golden Goal in the World Championships to break a third period tie. It was all in the family for Kessel.
“Yeah, they (my borthers) thought pretty well of my hockey, hard to keep in great contact when you’re not around each other, but I know that they check up on me.”
The biggest challenge in Kessel’s dream season came from the Boston College Eagles, led by their dynamic scorer Alex Carpenter. Her one tally gave BC the lead in their NCAA semifinal thriller, but they finally fell in overtime to Minnesota.
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| Lady Gophers Remain Perfect |
“We were waiting for that game all season, expecting it,” said Alex. “We held our ground, but we fell to experience. They had a lot more experience than we did.” When they went through the handshake line, she did not say a word to Kessel. They had never met.
That night Bobby Carpenter was in Atlantic City, scouting college games for the Devils, frantically checking his phone for score updates from Alex’s mom. “Yeah, he was trying to book flights out to Minnesota,” said Alex, laughing. She has no objections to being compared to her famous father.
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| Carpenters Squared |
“I get it from teammates a lot that there’s something similar between us…for one I get that we look alike on the ice. Our vision of the ice is the same. I take that as a compliment because I know he was a pretty good playmaker back in his day.” But unlike Bobby, Alex has a special on-ice gift that allows the puck to find her.
“Yeah definitely, I know that couple of my teammates say that I know where it is around the net, where the right spots are, I guess its like an internal thing, I don’t really have to think about it, it just kind of happens, the puck just ends up there I guess.”
That gift propelled her to a 70-point season, good enough to lead Hockey East in scoring as a sophomore. She finished her year at the World Championships in hockey-mad Ottawa, playing on a line with her NCAA nemesis Kessel, in a setting that’s as close to the NHL as a woman player can be.
“The atmosphere was crazy, there were 18 thousand people in the Ottawa Senators rink, it was a little nerve racking at first, but after the first game against Canada and a sold out crowd, we kind of settled in and figured it out. It was fun.” Especially fun to beat Canada for a gold on their soil, something that had never been done before. Kessel recalled that historic third period in which her snipe made history.
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| The Golden Goal |
“I thought we had great momentum that game, the team came out hard. I don’t know, for some reason I thought we were going to get the next one. It was a really exciting environment to be a part of.”
Two months later it is now next season, and Kessel and Carpenter are no longer strangers checking each other out from 1000 miles away; they sit next to each other in the locker room, two supreme scorers with NHL All-Star blood lines, joined in a journey to reclaim Olympic Gold.
USA women haven’t touched gold in over 15 years, and if they are to realize that dream, Kessel and Carpenter will be the ones on the cover of that box of Wheaties next March.
