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For the first time in five years, the Quinnipiac women’s ice hockey team will head into a season without Abbie Ives on the roster. Instead, the goaltending depth chart will consist of junior Logan Angers, sophomore Allie Kelley, and first-year Catie Boudiette.

The three have a combined four total college games played and Angers played all four. But after talking with her, she seems confident and excited for a bigger role this year with the Bobcats, saying “It’s exciting coming into a new year just all the possibilities that could happen with our team this year, I feel like we have a pretty strong team coming into the year.”

Angers is now in year three. When asked if she was ready to take on a bigger leadership role she told Q30 Sports “Yeah, I think definitely becoming older like everyone had to take on a leadership role as they get older, more experienced and everything you kind of learn the ways of how our team functions and can help like younger players as well to learn the same thing.”

Q30 Sports also got a chance to sit down with Quinnipiac women’s ice hockey assistant coach Amanda Alessi just five days before the first puck drop of the season against Sacred Heart.

One of the hardest things about being a goalie is the mental game. Staying in games when things aren’t going your way, keeping focused through a bad stretch, and not letting this type of stuff get to you.

When asked what they do to combat these kinds of things or help their goalies, Alessi replied “You know, after a game or a practice where you know they don’t feel like they performed. There’s obviously video that we can watch, but for their own mental game.

“They’ve got the skills and the tools to reflect, to not necessarily beat themselves up too much to find a proactive way to kind of rebound from that and then to move forward.” Alessi also mentioned that mental coach Spencer Wood is able to do some things with the goalies as well.

When asked how they’re able to keep a solid relationship between the goalies but also keep the competition level high, Alessi brought up a very good point.

“You know everybody chooses the position of goalie understanding that you’re going to be fighting for one spot you know defensemen fight for six, forwards fight for 12.”

Obviously, COVID is still in the air and has affected much of our daily lives. Alessi believes their team is handling it very well, mentioning that the coaching staff preaches to the players that they can only control what they can control and that is out of their control.