Endicott Women’s Hockey. (Photo Credit – David Le’ 10)

Welcome back to another year of Division III hockey & DIIIHockeyNews.com! To begin our season previews as the 2026-27 Men’s & Women’s Division III hockey seasons creep upon us, with preseason games beginning in just three weeks. We released our Conference of New England (CNE) men’s preview on Tuesday (9/22/2026), now here’s the women’s side of things.

Last year, we went in alphabetical order in terms of conferences, this year, we’re going to go with the flow and release different conferences in no particular order. However, men’s and women’s articles will always come out together.

We’ll discuss various aspects of this league including how our analysis fared last year, as well as returning production, dark horses, and some general analysis!

Currently, the CNE features:

Curry
Endicott
Johnson & Wales
Nichols
Roger Williams (Inaugural season)
Salve Regina (left CNE after 2023-24 season, affiliate member as of 26-27)
Suffolk
University of New England
Western New England

2025-2026 Overview

Last season, Endicott (21-5-2) squeaked out a regular season conference title finishing with 43 points to Western New England’s 41, followed by the Gulls’ 5th CNE conference championship earning them yet another auto-bid into the NCAA tournament. The Gulls would be the lone team from the CNE to qualify for the dance as the overall league NPI-strength wasn’t high enough to earn them any at-large bids. In the tournament, Endicott earned the 10-seed, which resulted in an away game in Saint Paul, Minnesota against the 7-seed Hamline University who defeated the Gulls in Beverly, MA earlier in the season, a rare occurrence seeing two teams from the east and west facing each other in the regular season and the NCAA tournament by coincidence. The Pipers shutout the Gulls 3-0, advancing to face Norwich University in the quarterfinal round. Nevertheless, last season in my opinion was Endicott’s best season yet despite their 25-2-0 record in the 2019-20 season for a variety of reasons. Starting with their regular season results against the blue-chip teams in the east, which included a win over #7 Plattsburgh, a 1-0-1 record against #3 Middlebury, while also giving the back-to-back-to-back national champions #1 Wisconsin-River Falls an extremely close 3-1 game in the Cardinal/Panther Classic where it was a one-goal-game with under three minutes remaining in the 3rd period. Adding to this, the Gulls also went 15-2-1 in conference play, with their only blemishes coming against WNE (L & T) & Suffolk (L). I believe the consistent positive results over teams such as Middlebury & Plattsburgh, along with the rest of the schedule showed us that the Gulls took their next step as a program, showing they’re for real on the national stage, not just in conference play, or getting a win here-and-there against the blue-chip opponents.

In other news, Western New England continued to be extremely consistent, finishing with an 18-8-1 record, head coach Katie Zimmerman now holds a career record of 70-49-14 (.579) with the Golden Bears with an NCAA tournament appearance in the 2023-24 season. The Golden Bears have won at least 15+ games in three of her five seasons at helm, last season’s 18 wins being the most in program history (previous high was 17 in 2023-24).

Johnson and Wales women’s hockey takes on Western New England at the Lynch Arena in Pawtucket, RH. January 16, 2026. (Photo via Johnson & Wales Athletic Communications).

The biggest surprise and most overlooked result I believe came from Rhode Island, the Johnson & Wales Wildcats, coached by 4th year head coach Maddy Santore. The Wildcats finished 14-12-1, their best season as a program, the previous high win total was 11, dating back to 2021-22 when they finished 11-17-1. This was the first-ever above .500 season for JWU as a program (established in 2015-16) and Coach Santore deserves a lot of credit for their 3rd place 10-7-1 finish in the CNE regular-season (program-best). JWU went 3-1-0 against Curry College, including a quarterfinal CNE playoff win over the Colonels, the Wildcats also defeated WNE once in the regular season, followed by three losses to Endicott, however they played the Gulls extremely close in two out of the three, falling 3-2 (OT) & 1-0. Two standout players this past season were their goaltenders, who split time during the season. Sophomore Katelyn Cardoso started 14 games, finishing with an 8-6-0 record, 1.98 GAA & .926 save-%, while freshman Avery Hall started 11 games, finishing with a 5-5-1 record, 1.98 GAA & .942 save-%. Incredible season for Coach Santore & her JWU Wildcats.

Otherwise, it was a tightly contested race in the standings as usual outside of the top two teams (Endicott & WNE), with WNE finishing 11 points clear of 3rd place.

FINAL REGULAR-SEASON STANDINGS 2025-26:

How our analysis panned out

Last season, I wrote preview articles for each league, noting some thoughts and analysis as we will do here, if you would like to read last season’s CNE preview article, click here. Otherwise, we’ll briefly circle back to see how I did in terms of ‘predicting’ / making educated guesses as to what would occur last season. I’m doing this to preface that of course we aren’t perfect, but we [Scott & Myself] have a pretty solid clue on what to lookout for and some notable stats/offseason occurrences to keep an eye on as we enter a new season.

*Keep in mind, this section can vary in length for each conference depending on what was said in last year’s article, it can be brief, or more detailed, some leagues had more ‘predictions’ & ‘analysis’ than others. 

Getting this out of the way, my pick to win the league was Endicott and I didn’t think it was particularly close from a betting odds perspective if there was a line on it:

“Endicott is the strong favorite, everyone knows that going in, that doesn’t mean it’s guaranteed, but if you polled every person in that league, the Gulls are the favorite coming into every season.” 

My biggest dark horse was University of New England, I felt as though the Nor’Easters were primed to make a challenge with the top teams in the league and potentially knockoff someone come CNE playoff time as they were coming off their best season since 2019-20. Although UNE had an impressive 2-1 win over Bowdoin who was ranked for a small portion of the season, their regular season results weren’t quite what I expected in terms of wins, finishing 11-15-1. To their credit however, they had a lot of close games including six, one-goal losses, along with a playoff win against Suffolk in the quarterfinals which was followed up by a season-ending 3-0 loss to the eventual champions Endicott.

A big swing-and-miss of mine was on Suffolk, who finished the season as shown above a disappointing 6-18-2 after getting back to double-digit wins the season prior. Personally, I was higher on them than I should’ve been when it was all said and done, but that’s why we play the games! Hopefully the Rams can get back on track and potentially get back to the NCAA tournament sometime in the future as they qualified via auto-bid in 2022-23 under former head coach Taylor Wasylk.

Finally, I did give the Wildcats of Johnson & Wales a shoutout, but like Suffolk on the men’s side of the CNE, they exceeded my (and many others) expectations when it was all said and done.

“I would remiss if I didn’t mention them at least once, keep an eye on Johnson & Wales pulling off some upsets or winning some games that may be overlooked. Last season they had one of their best seasons in program history under now fourth year Head Coach Maddy Santore, finishing 9-15-2.”

I had my eye on them in the preseason to potentially knock off some top teams in the league, but as mentioned, they exceeded all expectations and went on to have a program-best season. I liked the direction the program was headed under the current staff and as a sidenote, I appreciated the road trip out west to St. Kate’s (MIAC) during the previous 2024-25 season where they went 1-0-1. It’s always fun to see teams of any tier/status play crossover games and give the student athletes a trip they won’t forget, regardless of the size/investment of the respective programs.

Returning Production

Disclaimer via Scott: “I did the best I could to predict these rosters going forward, as I believe all players with exhausted eligibility are out of the equation.  NOTE: Transfers are a bit tricky, as I only took players off who were absent from the final rosters of 2025-26, and players who have confirmed found a new spot.”

Looking at the league and the estimated returning production via our guy Scott Huston, let’s rank the teams based on total returning cumulative points:

  1. Nichols: 96.18%
  2. Western New England: 83.25%
  3. Curry: 81.67%
  4. Johnson & Wales: 78.42%
  5. Suffolk: 72.26%
  6. Salve Regina: 68.79%
  7. Endicott: 65.55%
  8. Univ. New England: 53.03%
  9. Roger Williams: 0% *inaugural season*

As we can clearly see, Nichols leads the way, nearly returning their entire production unit from last season, with just over 96% of points returning. The Bison only graduated three players who combined for a total of five points, so their freshman class who led the way last season should be better now as sophomores. Looking at the history of Nichols, they’ve been extremely consistent in terms of annual wins, they’ve only won 10+ games twice (2017-18 & 2018-19) and they seem to hover between 4-7 wins since their inaugural season of 2008-09. I would like to be optimistic about the Bison given the amount of production thy return, but they’ll need to take a big step forward this season to break their 10+ win drought and get back into the CNE playoffs.

Curry is a team that returns 82% of their total production, which consists of 89% goals & 76% assists. This is following their disappointing season compared to what they’ve previously done, but I’m very optimistic that they’ll get back on the right track and with a season under their belts, I believe the new class that was brought in will be able to gel better and get it done on the ice.

I’m going to go into more detail with Johnson & Wales in my ‘dark horses’ section following this portion, but I’m very high on the Wildcats in the CNE as they return about 79% of their production from their best season ever as a program. Keep reading to see my full thoughts on JWU in the following section.

Michaela Birmingham – Western New England (Photo by WNE Golden Bear Athletics)

Looking at Western New England, you’ve got to be confident if you’re a part of the program, the constant battle for CNE glory against the reigning champions Endicott continues once again and the Golden Bears return just over 83% following the graduation of two players and one transfer. The main loss here is that 14% of their lost production comes from the graduation of Maddie Pope, a senior forward who put up 11 goals & 17 assists. They’ll need to find player(s) to replace her high production numbers, but with so many key contributors returning, I don’t believe they’ll skip a beat. WNE’s main returners include Jenna Lynch (12G & 19A), Mabel Gerard (17G & 13A), Michaela Birmingham (7G & 18A). & Lilly Ainley (3G & 16A).

Salve Regina makes their return to the CNE after getting dragged around by their administration and men’s program to the NEHC & Independent-status last season, they’ll look to improve from last season’s 14-11-0 finish, which was the most wins for the program (other than 2024-25) since the 2014-15 season. The Seahawks won 17 games in 2024-25, but prior to that, they went below .500 every season dating back to 2014-15 (16-9-1). They’ll return just over 68% of their production, the biggest loss being Riley Esposito, who scored 6 goals and assisted on 16. They’ll also graduate one of their goaltenders (Sydney Baxter), who split time with Taylor Hannafan last season, starting 12 & 13 games, respectively. Head coach Megan Toomey will be leading the squad in her 2nd season following the departure of former coach David Lun for his alma mater UMass-Boston.

In closing, Roger Williams enters as a brand-new team, featuring a completely new squad of players.

Dark Horses

This season I’m going to build off where I started last year, my co-main dark horse (despite a high 3rd place finish last season) is Johnson & Wales. I have a few other teams I have thoughts on, but to start, I’m buying more stock in JWU to continue where they left off and potentially knock off some of the top teams such as Endicott & Western New England, putting them in the race for a top three finish once again. Now, I’m aware a top three finishing team isn’t typically ‘dark horse’ worthy, but considering where this program has come from historically, I don’t believe it’s a stretch to consider them once again a ‘dark horse’ going into this season as they still have a ton to prove as a program to themselves and everyone else. JWU returns their two primary goaltenders which as mentioned, was the strongest part of their team last season. They return their top goalscorer Grace Adams, along with other key pieces on offense and defense. They had two reported transfers that we know of, otherwise, they return all but three graduating seniors, they should be even better than last year on paper, but again, that’s why we play the games.

Curry College Women’s Hockey. (Photo Credit – Caden Gilbert)

Personally, I think Curry will be improved from last season as they had a tough conference record of 5-11-2, but their overall record was very similar to their previous two seasons. Going into last season, the Colonels graduated 11 players and had four players transfer, only returning approximately 33% of their goals & 48% of assists. This season, they’ll be returning as mentioned, approximately 82% of their total production, which consists of 89% goals & 76% assists. Curry will also be facing a tougher non-conference schedule than we’ve previously seen from them, with the following games on their schedule: vs Colby, at Amherst, at Nazareth, & at Elmira, giving them tough tests that will only help them come conference playoff time.

This league for the time being is Endicott’s title to lose and Western New England’s title for the taking… until these two are knocked off, it’ll be a similar ending year-in & year-out for everyone.

Final Thoughts

My final thoughts remain similar to last season, it’s Endicott’s auto-bid to lose… Western New England will be looking to return to the NCAA tournament after winning their lone-CNE title in 2024, defeating Curry 5-3 following Curry’s 1-0 upset win over Endicott in the semifinals. Curry looks to get back to the title game, while Johnson & Wales looks to show the league that for the time being, they’re here to stay. Once playoff time arrives, anything can happen as we see new examples every year from many leagues, but again, it’s Endicott’s title to lose and everyone else’s for the taking…

I think there’s a lot of league-potential for growth, not necessarily national, but league-wide. The league will remain a one-bid league as the conference NPI strength won’t be high enough compared to its competition. I think we see growth from multiple teams are we highlighted throughout this article, but it’ll be a few more seasons until we potentially see this conference create national growth with possibly challenging for two bids in the NCAA tournament.

Here’s to another great season of Division III hockey and thank you for reading our first women’s preview article of the season! More previews will be out in the coming week as we inch closer to the 2026-27 season!