Good news: Columbus Blue Jackets announce superstar return..

Fantilli was chosen as the third overall pick in the NHL entry draft of 2023. This came after an exciting year for the Wolverines of the University of Michigan. In 36 games, he scored 65 points with 30 goals and 35 assists. Additionally, he assisted in giving Team Canada a one-two punch at the 2023 World Junior Championships. Connor Bedard, a current Chicago Blackhawks player, was the first overall selection and a fellow 2023 draft pick.

For Columbus, Fantilli is having an outstanding season thus far. At 6’2″, he is fairly large and plays center. He has 12 goals and 15 assists through 49 games in 2023–24, good for 27 points. He also has an excellent 8.3 CF% Rel. He has proven his ability to

What Effect Will This Have on the Blue Jackets?

Columbus is a team that prioritizes expansion and improvement. They have a few outstanding, young players making their name in addition to Fantilli. Players such as Yegor Chinakhov and Kirill Marchenko, among others, demonstrate the club’s potential for greatness in the years to come. Hopefully, Adam Fantilli’s injury is not a long-term one and he will be able to return to the starting lineup shortly. Meanwhile, Fantilli will be able to start his recuperation process during the All-Star Break.

The year 2024 gives National Girls and Women in Sports Day, which is observed today, a completely new significance.

The Professional Women’s Hockey League’s debut season has demonstrated the extent of progress the sport has achieved in enabling women to pursue careers in hockey. The options that girls and women have in hockey have drastically changed in the last several decades.

More women than ever before have taken up hockey, and in Columbus, the sport has been expanding in a similar manner.

Even though she is Canadian, Nadine Muzerall, the head coach of the Ohio State women’s hockey team, found that the hockey atmosphere in her childhood was very different from other cultures.

“Being born in 1978, there was no girls hockey where I grew up,” the woman remarked. In the 1980s, when I was growing up, women’s and girls’ hockey wasn’t all that popular. I thus played with every boy. I switched from playing boys’ hockey to girls’ hockey when I was around twelve years old.

This is not at all like what she experienced at Ohio State here in Columbus. These days, we see female athletes playing for dominant teams and competing year-round for the national title before entering the professional ranks.

With a 24-2-0 record and an international reputation, Muzerall (shown above) is in her seventh season as OSU’s head coach. Her team is once again ranked first in college hockey.

After playing hockey at the University of Minnesota, Muzerall graduated with the most career points for Minnesota and continues to lead the program in goals scored overall with 139.

“You don’t think like young girls do now, when they can play professionally after college, get paid, and perform for tens of thousands of fans,” the speaker remarked. “You simply always had the mindset that you would be the first woman to compete in the Olympics.

You know, there were no opportunities or notions that a professional women’s league would exist, so it was the only thing you could dream about. However, you know, there would be an Olympics.

It is crucial for the future female hockey players in Central Ohio and around the world to have role models in the sport who share their viewpoint.

As a result, Muzerall considers how her career as a hockey player and even today as a coach has been influenced by female coaches. Whether in professional or collegiate hockey, we are witnessing an increasing number of women assuming significant positions in teams, and this trend will eventually filter down to the younger levels.

With the OSU women’s team at the top of the pyramid right now, there is more hope than ever for female hockey players in Columbus.

Assistant coach Kelsey Cline, who is in her third year of teaching at Ohio State alongside Muzerall, has developed a team of superstars, including eight players who have moved on to the PWHL in its debut season. According to Cline, there are obvious distinctions between women’s hockey today and when she was a University of Minnesota student-athlete.

“We are very connected to our team and always have young girls at our games,” Cline remarked. “Obviously, those steps are being taken in this area to continue to grow and develop the players who are here, but it always takes time.”

Zoe Douglass, a resident of Columbus, demonstrates this. She learned to play hockey here and has witnessed the sport’s evolution firsthand. The 19-year-old was one of the few female players when she first joined the Columbus Ice Hockey Club; these days, she sees more girls as she assists in coaching the same team that first introduced her to the sport.