At least one professional Minnesota hockey team can win its season-opener. 

Two days after the NHL’s Minnesota Wild fell to the Colorado Avalanche 4-1 to kick off the 2018-2019 campaign, the Minnesota Whitecaps shut out the Metropolitan Riveters 4-0 at the TRIA Rink in St. Paul to embark on their first National Women’s Hockey League season. 

“I was really excited to see how well we played and to see how we improved from period to period,” defender Lee Stecklein said after the win. “(We got) a big first goal, we needed that (and) I think that really got us going.”

Katie McGovern scored the first goal on an impressive one-timer late in the first period, a lead that was stretched to 2-0 in the second as Hannah Brandt managed to shovel a shot past Metropolitan goaltender Katie Fitzgerald.

“I think we played well,” head coach Rhonda Engelhardt said. We looked fast, we were just fumbling the puck. Once we figured that out, we showed what we could do.”

The Riveters (0-1) are the defending Isobel Cup champions and returned the NWHL’s leading scorer and Most Valuable Player Alexa Gruschow this season.   

An even-strength goal by Kate Schipper early in the third period made the score 3-0, and Kendall Coyne-Schofield iced the win with an empty-net goal with 56 seconds left in regulation. Goaltender Amanda Leveille finished with 19 saves to earn the shutout for Minnesota, while Coyne-Schofield was named the game's First Star for her efforts.  

Coyne-Schofield, the 2016 Patty Kazmaier Award winner as the top athlete in women’s college hockey, thanked the Brodt family for their tireless work in the arena of women’s hockey. 

“It goes without saying that without the Brodt’s, we wouldn’t be sitting here,” Coyne-Schofield said. “You’re proud to play for the Whitecaps. You know what they represent.”

The Whitecaps (1-0) performed in front of a sellout crowd of 1,200, a lively congregation that began gathering during the earliest stages of warmups. 

“During the T.V. timeouts I couldn’t even talk because it was just so loud,” Engelhardt said with a grin. “That’s a good thing. We want energy, we want people to enjoy the experience and watch good hockey.”

The team also wants the young women in the crowd to feel as though their hockey dreams can lead to this stage.

Brooke White-Lancette, head coach of the Cretin-Derham Hall girls’ hockey team, finished coaching in the Minnesota Hockey Tier I playoffs on Saturday morning before lacing her skates as a Whitecaps forward. 

“A lot of those girls came to the game tonight,” White-Lancette said, referring to her 14U Tier I squad. Come out here and being able to get the win and having (the girls) see all of the role-models they can look up to, I think it’s great,” White-Lancette added. 

“It was a great night.”