A U SPORTS Grid

I've been asked by those who follow U SPORTS women's hockey how I keep track of everything when it comes stats, history, and the knowledge that I occasionally post here on HBIC. I won't lie to you by telling you it's all on the U SPORTS or Canada West websites. It's not, and I doubt it ever will be since those organizations apparently don't give the same effort I do in seeking accurate information about its member teams and players. I really should put something together like that where fans and broadcasters can visit for information, but I'm not doing their dirty work for them for free.

Instead, I will tell you that I use multiple websites and have to seek out information whenever I'm researching something, and, if you don't already have a good idea of where to find it, the likelihood of finding what you seek is quite low. For example, U SPORTS has 34 players who have signed Letters of Intent to attend Canada West schools next season to play women's hockey, but I happen to know that number should be 40. Why? I've done the research and dug into who is attending where.

This lack of information became glaringly obvious during the build-up to the 2023 U SPORTS National Women's Hockey Championship in Montreal. I knew about a lot of the Canada West history at Nationals, but finding information on the other conferences were harder than it should have been. All I was looking for was a matrix that showed every team who had played at Nationals, in wht year, and how they finished. Do you think I could find something like that? Hint: nope.

That led me to doing something that U SPORTS should have already been doing over the course of its existence, and you might find this interesting as a resource.

This is every team who has played at Nationals since the CIS was formed in 1997, and it shows all the results of those tournaments in grid form. While this image only shows the finish that each team had at those tournaments, the spreadsheet I'm using also shows the scores of each of the games the teams played at the tournament so that one gets a better sense of how these teams fared when it came to their finish that season. It may also show trends in how teams played, which eras were dominated by which teams, and which programs have turned in the most consistent results.

There are some things to note, though. The thick line running between the 2014 and 2015 tournaments is when the format of the tournament expanded from six to eight teams. The "NR" seen for all eight 2020 teams indicated "no result" as that was the tournament that was wiped out thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. To make things easier to read when searching for winners, I colour-coded the medal winners for each season as well.

For those wondering, this grid shows two teams who went to Nationals that no longer exist in the Lethbridge Pronghorns (fourth-place in 2003) and the UQTR Patriotes (bronze medallists in 1998). For Canada West fans, all seven current teams who have gone to Nationals have medalled at least once, and Alberta leads the way with ten medals from the four western Canadian provinces. That run of excellence from 1999-2007 where they scored eight medals in nine years is only matched by McGill's medal runs where they picked up medals in nine of ten years between 2006-2015.

There are some additions I need to make to this grid as I want to add rankings to the comments where the scores can be found, and I'd like to start tabulating wins and losses per team against other conferences. If U SPORTS is ever going to fix their ranking system, these games where teams play teams from other conferences will go a long way in determining a better national ranking system. Having that information at one's fingertips should already be available, but it seems that will be an undertaking I'll pursue this summer.

There is a summary page that I created that counts all of the appearances made by teams as well as the number of times they finished in the eight possible places at the tournament. It should surprise no one that McGill leads the way with 20 appearances while Alberta is next with 17 appearances, but I was surprised that StFX was the third most frequent attendee at National Tournaments with 16 appearances. Wilfred Laurier is fourth with 12 appearances after their impressive runs during the early part of the CIS forming, and it would nice to see them find their way back to prominence both in the OUA and within U SPORTS.

Alberta does have the most gold medals with eight while McGill has both the most silver medals - six - and the most bronze medals - five. Wilfred Laurier has finished in fourth-place, just off the podium, five times, Alberta has finished in fifth-place three times, and StFX has finished in sixth-place eight times. No team has finished in seventh- or eighth-place more than once. Pretty impressive stuff when it comes to being one of the best eight teams in Canada at the end of the university women's hockey season!

I'm sure there will be more work to do when it comes to finding numbers that the conferences and U SPORTS simply either don't track or don't post, so I doubt my work on this front will ever be done. When it comes to analytics, I know some teams are using them, some teams claim to use them but clearly don't, and others rely on the coach's instincts. I'm not here to provide free statistic analysis for anyone other than myself, so if teams want to use this information, they're free to do so since the governing bodies don't seem to want to provide this data.

What I do know is that it shouldn't take combing through the dark alleys of the internet to find simple and accurate information. If U SPORTS and the conferences really cared about promoting women's hockey, they'd have someone doing deeper dives like I do into the numbers. One can only hope and dream that this becomes a reality at some point. But don't hold your breath, I beg you.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!