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DULUTH — The picture for 2025-26 at Amsoil Arena is now complete as the Minnesota Duluth’s women’s hockey program revealed next season’s schedule Wednesday in conjunction with the WCHA releasing its league schedule.
The Bulldogs are coming off a fifth-straight NCAA tournament appearance in 2024-25 and will be entering their second season under head coach Laura Schuler in 2025-26. The Sept. 20 start date is the earliest for a regular season game in program history.
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Below is a combined men’s and women’s schedule for 2025-26, plus five things to know about the Bulldogs 2025-26 women’s hockey schedule. You can read five things to know about the men’s schedule here.
The Bulldogs will play 20 of their 34 regular season games in 2025-26 on the road, including the first six games. Four of the six nonconference games are road games while two are at a neutral site.
UMD plays four games in seven days to start the season, opening with a Saturday-Sunday series at Mercyhurst on Sept. 20-21 in Erie, Pennsylvania. Then they travel four hours east through New York to Syracuse to play the Orange in a Thursday-Friday series Sept. 25-26.
UMD opens WCHA play Oct. 10-11 at defending league and national champion Wisconsin at LaBahn Arena in Madison.
UMD Women's Hockey Releases Complete 2025-26 Schedule
Read more: https://t.co/NnmNWtgNvd pic.twitter.com/G9GQxl3RBG
Two of the Bulldogs’ six nonconference games will take place across the pond, and that doesn’t mean Lake Superior.
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UMD will take part in the 2026 Friendship Series on Jan. 2-3 in Belfast, Northern Ireland — part of the United Kingdom — along with Boston University, Harvard and Quinnipiac. UMD is the first WCHA member to take part in the event.
This will be the first overseas trip for the Bulldogs women’s hockey program. UMD said in its schedule announcement more details about the Friendship Series will be available in the coming weeks. The official travel partner of the Friendship Series, Cara Travel Group, has packages available now on its website for fans.
It’s actually more like two-and-a-half doubleheader weekends for UMD men’s and women’s hockey during the regular season at Amsoil Arena in 2025-26.
The only doubleheader of the first half is on Saturday, Oct. 18, when the women host Minnesota State and the men have Bemidji State. The Bulldogs men are at the Beavers on Friday night , while the Mavericks are in Duluth all weekend for a WCHA series.
The other two doubleheader weekends at Amsoil Arena are Jan. 9-10 when the women return from Ireland to host Wisconsin, while the men have a nonconference series against Lindenwood (St. Louis, Missouri). The women host Bemidji State and the men have North Dakota on Feb. 6-7.
Another doubleheader is possible if the women secure home ice for the WCHA quarterfinals. That best-of-three series would be played when the men are hosting Colorado College on Feb. 27-28.
UMD could be without four players for the final 6-8 games of the 2025-26 regular season because of the 2026 Winter Olympics on Feb. 6-22 in Italy.
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Senior forward Thea Johansson and junior defenseman Ida Karlasson of Sweden, senior defenseman Krista Parkkonen of Finland and junior goaltender Eve Gascon of Canada are all candidates for their respective country’s Olympic women’s hockey teams. They could also miss additional time during the season for pre-Olympic camps.
UMD is scheduled to play series against Bemidji State, St. Thomas and Minnesota during the Olympics — which coincide with the final three weeks of the regular season. UMD also travels to Ohio State on Jan. 30-31. That’s the weekend before the Olympics begin.
No countries — not even the United States and Canada — will be centralizing their national/Olympic teams in 2025-26 because of the PWHL, so UMD won’t lose a player like Gascon for the entire season. That also means Gascon cannot take an Olympic redshirt season like Ashton Bell did in 2021-22 or Maddie Rooney in 2017-18.
UMD, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio State and St. Cloud State will all likely be missing players to the 2026 Winter Olympics over the final month of the regular season.
One notable date missing from the league’s schedule release Wednesday was the 2026 WCHA Final Faceoff. The league has yet to make an official announcement about the 2026 league semifinals and final after Amsoil Arena hosted in 2025.
The event is expected to begin rotating again after spending nine consecutive seasons at Minnesota’s Ridder Arena in Minneapolis. St. Thomas announced this week its new rink in St. Paul, Anderson Arena, will open on Oct. 24, making it a prime candidate to be the next host.
To broaden the pool of Final Faceoff sites and accommodate rinks that host men’s and women’s hockey — such as Anderson Arena and Amsoil Arena — the WCHA’s championship weekend will likely take place over three days instead of two in the future with semifinals on Thursday and championship on Saturday.
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