Norwich University Women’s Hockey. (Photo by Nathanael LePage)

Our season previews continue as the 2025-2026 Men’s & Women’s Division III hockey regular season nears closer. Today, we look at the women’s side of a league in its inaugural season as a league in the post-NEHC era, the Little East Conference (LEC).

The Little East Conference has been around for some time now, but this season will be the first year ever that the conference sponsors Men’s & Women’s Division III Ice Hockey. The men will receive an auto bid this year, while the women will have to wait until at least next year. If you would like to read about the entire conference realignment on the men’s & women’s side, click the hyperlinks on each respective side and you can learn all about it.

The LEC features:

Castleton
Keene State
New England College
Norwich
Plymouth State
Southern Maine
UMass-Boston

2025-2026 Preview

Since this is the inaugural season for the Little East, there’s no history to look back on other than how these teams performed in their respective leagues. If you would like to read about the realignment and a mini “preview”, please refer to our 2025-26 Women’s D-III Hockey Conference Realignment: An in-depth analysis & per-league breakdown article where we go through everything to do with the new league and realignment that took place.

Returning Production

Looking at the league and the returning production via our guy Scott Huston, we find some interesting results:

Norwich, the early runaway favorite in the league, will be coached by their newly hired HC Justin Simpson, but he’ll return a fair amount of production without one key piece. The Cadets return about 72% of goals & assists, equaling 72.05% of total points from last season, but like Southern Maine, they lose their star goaltender Leocadia Clark to graduation. Clark spent five seasons at Norwich and I would argue was overlooked by many on the national stage as the Cadets weren’t able to make any deep NCAA runs. In five seasons, she played 77 games (4603:48 minutes), averaged a 1.29 GAA, .939 save %, 26 shutouts, & a record of 51-20-4… She’s one of the best D-III has seen and I don’t believe she got nearly enough credit throughout her career.

Castleton, the #2 picked team in the coaches’ poll, returns 76.87% of points. The Spartans are coming off their second straight 11-win season, but I believe this league benefits them greatly and can potentially get them back to that 15-win mark we saw them hit in 2021-22 and 17 wins in 2015-16. They’ll need to replace their starting goaltender, but if they can find the right one and put the returning pieces together along with their new additions, I like their chances to disrupt things.

VTSU Castleton Women’s Hockey (Photo via Castleton University Athletics)

UMass-Boston returns a fair amount of talent, and like Norwich, begin the year with a new Head Coach as we’ll mention shortly, UMass-Boston alum David Lun. Getting back nearly 71% of scoring and 68% of points from last season should help Lun in his return to his alma mater, don’t be shocked if we see the Beacons challenging for the top.

Bottoming out in terms of returning production is the Panthers of Plymouth State. Following their MASCAC title, they return a mere 52% of scoring and just under 60% of team points. I believe they’ll fare well this season, but it’ll be hard to top what they did last season in terms of success, record, and ending in style…

Dark Horses

I see the LEC Women’s Coaches Preseason Poll and it’s hard to really find a dark horse based on the votes and what I expect. Norwich comes out as the heavy favorite with 36 points, next closest being Castleton with 24. 2nd-5th is separated by an entire 2 points… not really easy to consider anyone a ‘dark horse’ other than Keene State or New England College.

UMass-Boston Women’s Hockey. (Photo via UMass-Boston Athletics).

Personally, I believe UMass-Boston will be put in a solid position to challenge for the 2nd place spot and potentially split a series with Norwich as alum David Lun (UMass-Boston ’11) accepted the head coaching job following the uncertainty surrounding the Salve Regina Women’s hockey program. Lun, took over the Salve program and completely turned them around for the better, going 17-10-0 in his final season with the Seahawks, capping off a tenure in which he improved record-wise every season. Former Beacon head coach Moe Bradley accepted an assistant coach role with Penn State University (NCAA D-I Women) which left the door open for Lun to make his return. The Beacons have won 10+ games in every season of existence besides two (2011-2013), other than that, they’ve always been a steady program with one NCAA tournament appearance coming in 2015-2016. Keep your eye on them to make a run at a possible upset NCAA bid over the Cadets and others.

Once again, it’s weird calling the T-3 voted team a ‘dark horse’, but the margin is wide enough where I believe this warrants it.

Final Thoughts

Overall, like I said with the men’s side of the Little East Conference, I really like the matchups here, they make more sense. Sure, the classic Norwich vs Elmira games will be missed, but maybe we see them on a bigger stage (NCAA Tournament)? I think Plymouth State can be a wildcard in this league, coming off their MASCAC conference championship that took four overtimes vs Rivier, will they be able to keep up the momentum as a young program under their third year Head Coach Ben Chipman?

Southern Maine… a program losing a leader and multi-time NEHC goaltender of the year award winner in Haley McKim will need to see if they have a quality replacement as they’ve only got two goalies listed on the roster, a freshman and junior who have played a combined zero games in college… Time will tell.

Finally, I’m interested in if we’ll see an NCAA at-large bid come from this league since there’s no auto bid for the near future on the women’s side of the LEC. Personally, I think the math would only allow Norwich to receive one due to the Cadets having far and away the best SOS with their strong non-conference games against Plattsburgh, Williams, Cortland, Oswego, Elmira/Plattsburgh, & Amherst. Plus, I believe Norwich is the only team capable (assuming all goes to plan) of running away with this league in the regular season, giving them a good enough record plus a stellar non-conference record to warrant a possible at-large bid via the NPI.