Beauts Notebook: Spooky, ooky, kooky, and ready for puck drop

Some fun for Halloween and some insight on the inner dealings ahead of Opening Weekend.

Halloweekend will already be in the books by the time this goes live, but it was a devil of a time for Beauts players and staff alike. Friday night’s practice was their costume contest, which saw groups of players dress in themes and record some hilarious social media posts.

  • My personal favorites were hard to decide, as I think everyone did amazingly. However, the Balenciaga models (Anjelica Diffendal, Claudia Kepler, Michaela Boyle, Tera Hofmann, and Toni Matzka) and the Hanson brothers (Auttie MacDougall, Dominique Kremer, and Madi Nichols) made me laugh the most, and the overall cutest idea to me goes to the Super Mario squad of Lollo Berndtsson (Ghost), Jess Healey (Mario), Courtney Maud (Luigi), and Iveta Klimasova (Wario), complete with color-coordinated balloons.
  • The winners, though, as decided by the operations staff, were the quartet of “grannies” comprised of Allison Attea, Kassidy Sauve, Grace Kleinbach, and Emma Nuutinen:/

A little surprised Lollo wasn’t part of this group, as she mentioned a week or so ago that it would be fitting as she’s the oldest of the team (at a graceful 34 years old). Still, it was a lot of fun watching her in the crease with a cluster of white balloons tied to her helmet.

  • If you peeped the bottom of the above tweet, you’ll probably have noticed that Sauve finally has a kit in Beauts blue and black, and I wish I was able to get a full photo of them because they are absolutely spectacular, complete with the Buffalo skyline. Obviously, stay tuned for those once Nov. 5 rolls around.
  • Some Beauts family also joined in the fun, with assistant coach Jeff State bringing his two young sons in full pirate and superhero garb, as well as some of the players’ significant others (who got a kick out of seeing their partners in full costume zooming across the ice during drills). We all agreed the trash bag Balenciaga costumes were especially hilarious to see in motion.
  • I got to touch base with Nate Oliver earlier last week regarding not bringing Taylor Accursi back, and the gist of it is what we should probably come to expect more of in the future: as the league grows and expands, so do the expectations from organizations of their respective players to be able to commit more of their time to the team, something we were all aware Accursi wasn’t able to do last season. He had nothing but kind words to say about #95, acknowledged her time and contributions to the Beauts over the past five seasons, and made sure to include the phrase “Never say never” when it comes to a reunion down the line, so the impression is the door is open for that should the opportunity arise. More on that in my Beauts season preview, so check that out once it drops. /

Can you believe we’re here now?! October has flown by, Opening Weekend is just around the corner, and the Beauts are about to take on the new kids in La Force de Montreal. It’ll be really interesting to see what this team can do against what looks to be a literal force at least on paper, and it’ll be even nicer to see names like Ann-Sophie Bettez and Brooke Stacey back on the ice again on a regular basis. Yours truly will of course be on site at Northtown Center to catch all of the action all weekend, so keep your eyes peeled.