The WCHA coaches looked at four straight national title games between the same two programs and decided the team that lost the last one should open the season on top. Then the national polls dropped, and the people who actually watch the whole country put the champions back where the hardware says they belong.
Wisconsin is No. 1 in the USCHO.com preseason poll with 13 first-place votes and 293 points. Ohio State sits second with seven first-place votes and 287. Six points. The USA Hockey/The Rink Live poll is even tighter: Wisconsin 275, Ohio State 273. Eleven first-place votes for the Badgers, eight for the Buckeyes. That is the entire gap between a defending champion and the program that has chased it for four straight March finales.
I do not need a committee to tell me what March 22 already proved. Wisconsin beat Ohio State 3-2 at Pegula Ice Arena for the program’s ninth NCAA title and second straight. The Buckeyes finished 36-5-0. The Badgers finished 35-4-2. One goal separated them on the biggest stage, and the national voters treated that result like it still matters. The conference coaches treated it like a suggestion.
Zero All-WCHA Names Is the Loudest Snub on the Board
Wisconsin received two first-place votes in the WCHA coaches’ poll and finished second with 44 points. Ohio State took six first-place votes and 48 points. Fine. Coaches cannot vote for their own teams, and Ohio State has the resume to justify the lean. What I cannot shake is the preseason All-WCHA team: Joy Dunne, Jocelyn Amos, Caitlin Kraemer, Mira Jungåker, Chloe Primerano, Ève Gascon. No Badgers. None.
I am not pretending the Buckeyes lack stars. Dunne earned seven of eight coaches’ votes for Preseason Player of the Year, and she earned the attention. She told The Lantern, “Every year Ohio State’s getting better, and I think that’s why the standard keeps rising. The team, we keep bringing in more [and] more recruits and all the things, and I think every year, we keep going like that, in the dynasty we’re creating.” That is the voice of a senior who has lived inside this rivalry long enough to stop apologizing for the ambition.
Nadine Muzerall framed the year the same way. “Over the past couple years, we’ve been a young team, fierce, but young. This year, we have a lot of veterans in a role that are very hungry with a lot of young talent [in] our sophomores and our freshmen.” Hungry is the right word. Ohio State has lost the last two title games. Hunger is the only posture left.
Dunne also said the individual hardware is secondary now: “I think for me, as now I’m in my senior year, I’ve realized the individual awards are great, but I want the team ones, I want it with the girls.” I believe her. I also believe a defending champion with zero preseason All-WCHA selections just got handed the cleanest bulletin-board material this sport has produced since the last time these two met for the trophy.
Eighty-Four Polls and Counting, Still the Same Two Names
Either Wisconsin or Ohio State has held the No. 1 spot in every USCHO women’s ranking since November 2022. Eighty-four straight editions. Minnesota was the last team to interrupt them, and that was nearly four years ago. Every matchup since the 2023 title game has been No. 1 versus No. 2. Four consecutive national championship games. Wisconsin owns three of the four, including the last two.
The rest of the country is fighting for third. Minnesota sits there in both national polls. Penn State and Northeastern are right behind. Quinnipiac, Connecticut, Princeton, Minnesota Duluth fill out the next tier. Solid programs. None of them have cracked the binary at the top for years, and the preseason ballots just reaffirmed it. The WCHA still runs the sport. Inside the WCHA, two brands still run everything that matters in March.
I keep coming back to the six-point USCHO margin and the two-point USA Hockey margin. National voters did not crown a dynasty in exile. They crowned the team that already has the banner hanging. The coaches voted for the hungrier roster and the louder senior voice. Both ballots can be true at the same time. Only one of them gets to set the tone for October.
Wisconsin starts the year as the hunted with a blank All-WCHA sheet and a national No. 1 next to its name. Ohio State starts at the top of the conference poll and two points from the top of the national one, loaded with veterans who have already said out loud what they want. The fourth straight title game is not a prediction. It is the default setting until somebody else forces a rewrite. The polls just argued about the seeding. The ice will settle the rest.
