1. 1st Hat Trick
As mentioned here at THW yesterday, the Boston Pride’s Brianna Decker became the first player to score a hat trick in the NWHL on Sunday, helping lead the Pride to a 5-3 win over the Buffalo Beauts.
2. (Un)lucky 3s
Wins and losses have come in trios for all four NWHL teams. The Boston Pride and the Connecticut Whale are both 3-0-0-0, while the New York Riveters and the Buffalo Beauts are 0-3-0-0. Great for some and unlucky for others.
That wide gulf between the teams should start to close in the coming weeks. Both games this weekend were tight, with the Riveters in particular outplaying the Whale for most of the game.
However, the schedule won’t absolutely force two of those streaks to change for another three weekends of play. That’s when we will first get Whale vs. Pride and Riveters vs. Beauts. It’s of course possible that these streaks end before that weekend — November 29 — but at a minimum two of those streaks will be broken by the end of November.
3. Doughnuts
Lots of firsts keep happening and will keep happening through the league’s inaugural season. Next one that could fall? A shutout. No team has yet to be shutout, so the honor of being the first goaltender with a shutout is still up for grabs.
4. 34
That’s the incredible number of penalty minutes the Riveters have put up through three games. They lead the league in penalty minutes. Though the Pride aren’t far behind with 30. It’s a big jump down after that. The Whale have just 16 and the Beauts only 12.
5. 92.3%
That’s the wildly impressive penalty kill success rate coming from the Pride. Though they’ve been in the box for 15 minor penalties (a total of 13 shot-handed situations), they have only allowed a single power play goal against. Throw in that they’ve tallied a short-handed goal this year and they have an even goal differential down a man.
6. 20%
At the other end of the spectrum, the rarely penalized Beauts have a PK% of just 20%. They’ve allowed teams to score on the power play in four of five chances.
7. A Goal a Day
The Riveters grabbed their first power play goal of the season (they’re a 8.3% success rate currently) on Sunday against the Whale. But it was the only goal they scored. In each of the season’s first three games they’ve scored just a single goal.
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