Behind the Glass: Nicole Hall starts her SDHL career with a bang

When you score two goals in two pro games at the age of 15, it’s safe to say that you’re a pretty big deal

Behind the Glass is our weekly column collecting stories, stats, trends, and thoughts from the world of professional women’s hockey.

After the five month hiatus that we collectively call “the offseason,” Behind the Glass is back with the beginning of the 2019-20 season. We’re still over two weeks away from the first week of the NWHL regular season, but hockey is already in full swing on the other side of the Atlantic.


SDHL

  • SDE’s Sofia Reideborn, 20, has started the 2019-20 season with two wins and a .985 save percentage. She was one of three goalies who posted a shutout on the first day of the SDHL season. Through 120 minutes of hockey, Reideborn has stopped 65 of the 64 shots she’s faced.
  • HV71’s Sanni Hakala is the league’s leading goal scorer after the first weekend of hockey. Hakala has had back-to-back two-goal games against Leksands IF. Even more impressively, all four of her goals have been scored at even strength.
  • Brynäs IF’s new top line of Lara Stalder, Kateřina Mrázová, and Denisa Křížová have already combined for four goals. Brynäs is the second-highest scoring in the SDHL through the first weekend of the year. Both Mrázová and Křížová played in the NWHL last season./
  • Djurgårdens IF has been on the advantage for a total of 14:11 but have failed to score a power play goal. The only team that enjoyed more time on the power play in the first weekend was HV71 (15:47). Djurgården also allowed a shorthanded goal to SDE in Sunday’s 3-1 loss.
  • Nicole Hall, 15, has two goals in her first two games of SDHL hockey with Leksand. She and HV71’s Thea Johansson are the only two players under the age of 18 who picked up two points in the opening weekend. Johansson, 16, picked up one primary assist at even strength and one on the power play./

ZhHL

  • Agidel Ufa, the reigning champions of Russia’s women’s league, has started the 2019-20 season with a record of 1-2-0. Dynamo St. Petersburg earned back-to-back one-goal victories over Agidel before the champs blasted SK Gorny by a score of 6-1
  • SK Gorny’s Hayley Williams opened the 2019-20 season with three goals, two assists, and 10 SOG in her first two games of the season. Williams, who was an All-Star last year, scored 10 goals and notched nine assists with SK Gorny in 35 games last year. She is the lone American player in the ZhHL who does not play for the Shenzhen KRS Vanke Rays./
  • Dynamo St. Petersburg’s Ekaterina Nikolaeva has already piled up 35 PIM in three games. Nikolaeva was charged with a fighting major and a 20-minute game misconduct for an incident that occurred with just six seconds left in regulation in Dynamo’s victory yesterday. She also picked up a 10-minute misconduct penalty in Dynamo’s season opener against Agidel. Nikoleava earned 32 penalty minutes in 35 games last season.
  • Biryusa’s Valeria Pavlova has started the season with three goals and three games. Thus far, she’s set a blistering pace with an average of 8.0 SOG/GP (shots per game). Only one other player on Biryusa has scored a goal through the team’s first three games of the season.
  • Alex Carpenter is currently the only player on the Shenzhen KRS Vanke Rays with more than one point through Shenzhen’s first three games. She has points on three of Shenzhen’s four goals thus far. /

All data courtesy of sdhl.se, whl.khl.ru, and the author’s own tracking.