Madison Litchfield filling big pads for Vermont women’s hockey

Madison Litchfield is one of the most loyal longtime supporters of the Vermont women’s hockey program. It is therefore fitting that she may have the best seat in the Gutterson Fieldhouse for the Catamounts’ best years to come.

That is, they will be their best years if, among other variables, she has her say. The Burlington-area resident of one-and-a-half decades has taken the torch from the record-setting Roxanne Douville as the team’s new No. 1 netminder.

In a Thursday phone interview with Along the Boards, Litchfield recounted the crux of her upbringing in nearby Williston, Vt., where she had moved with her family at the age of five.

It was then and there that a then-fledgling women’s program at the state university cemented her passion for pucks.

“I was pretty set that I wanted to play hockey,” she said. “It was going to be my sport.”

Litchfield was frequenting the Fieldhouse when the Catamounts, who began varsity competition in 1995, upgraded from Division III to Division I for the 2001-02 season. She was around when the ECAC patches in the upper left corners of their jerseys gave way to Hockey East emblems in 2005.

Litchfield latched on to her adopted hometown club to such a degree that she willingly weathered a perpetual chain of needle-lean years. Even while rounding out her preparatory honing with the Junior Women’s League’s Boston Shamrocks, she would sneak glimpses of away games at Boston College, Boston University and Northeastern.

Home or road, she carried no qualms about backing head coach Tim Bothwell’s struggling students, who never mustered more than five victories in any of his six seasons at the helm.

“Leading up to when I came here, I watched the team struggle a bit here and there,” she allowed.

But when the time came for her own college commitment in the winter of 2013, the prospect of a hometown discount was looking less like a cheap investment in the way of winning. Vermont had parted with Bothwell in favor of Jim Plumer, who as part of his first round of recruitment tabbed the local product as one of the dynamic Douville’s apprentices.

“I remember sitting down with him and knowing that he had the power to turn this program around,” Litchfield recalled. “I wanted to be a part of that turnaround. I knew they weren’t doing great at the time, but…”

As his first impression, Plumer doubled the Catamounts’ win count from 2011-12 in both Hockey East and national action. That is, he improved them from three wins in the league and four overall to six and eight in those categories.

The fact that the WHEA expanded its playoff bracket to include all eight tenants, effective in 2013, made Vermont’s first postseason less than flattering. Even so, there was a foundation waiting when Litchfield submitted her letter of intent and entered already familiar territory in her new capacity.

Substantial support

A goaltender’s mask serves as an appropriate punctuation on the trite, yet apt Jekyll-Hyde parallel surrounding the sport’s participants. Its application to the head is a harbinger of the team’s most isolated and most dissected component’s immersion into fearsome focus.

Litchfield still undertakes that transformation on behalf of the Catamounts, Douville does not. But both mugs still grace the Gutterson Fieldhouse, the latter as the program’s new volunteer goaltending instructor.

“It’s awesome to still have Rox here,” Litchfield said. “I know exactly how she plays and she still has so much to teach. It’s great to have her verbalizing those lessons.”

Yes, verbalizing, as opposed to venting with a Voorhees- and vacuum-like temperament, the way Douville did amidst a season-long scramble for crease time in 2013-14.

“Last year, it was always that competitive atmosphere during our practices. We were trying to beat each other out in a friendly competition,” Litchfield said as the first half of the contrast. “Today, she’ll say ‘I noticed this, let’s work on that.’”

Though the Catamounts are a mere six games into the current campaign, and raring to face Union in their annual “Pack the Gut” event Friday, that work is yielding instant gratification.

At 3-2-1 on the year, Litchfield boasts a .928 save percentage and 1.99 goals-against average. She has limited the opponent to no more than two goals in five of those six outings.

Contrast that with her rookie stat line: 4-4-1 with a 3.50 GAA and .870 save percentage within 10 full or partial appearances.

“Last year, I remember going into some games unexpectedly,” she said. “This year, I knew Rox was gone, all of the pressure was going to be on my shoulders and that all eyes are going to be on me.

“But our team has been unbelievable in front of me, supporting me, clearing away rebounds. They have been phenomenal, making it easy for me.”

Therein sits the missing ingredient from when Vermont last infused a new celestial starter.

Unfinished rise

Douville’s arrival in 2010, when Litchfield was a sophomore in high school, marked the first rumbling of a revolution. The freshman phenom out of Beloueil, Que., kept the Catamounts in games at a rate that defied logic.

Discounting empty netters, she confined the opposition to zero, one or two goals 16 times in 22 appearances. Her reward was a sparkling .931 save percentage and 1.91 goals-against average, two bars no one else has reached in the program’s Division I era.

If the lack of a proper stable of skating mates was not self-evident in her 5-11-6 record, it was in her all-around statistical nosedive over the next two years. Her GAA swelled to the three range and save percentage dipped to .901 and .903 for 2011-12 and 2012-13, respectively.

But after Litchfield enrolled last season, while Plumer was seeking a sophomore surge behind the bench, Douville concocted a timely fireworks finale. She matched her freshman stoppage rate of .931 and coupled it with an even two goals against per night.

By the final weekend of February, Litchfield had an ultimate rinkside seat to her predecessor’s crowning culmination at the campus barn.

As part of UVM’s first winning season since its 2001 promotion (18-14-4 overall, 13-7-1 in league play), Douville backstopped a 3-2, triple-overtime victory over visiting Maine in the 2014 Hockey East quarterfinals.

The BC Eagles, perennial conference semifinalists and NCAA tournament entrants, ended the milestone thrill ride the following week with a 3-1 win. But Douville had already set another high mark with 14 victories, the most in a single season by any UVM stopper.

Her protégé could not have requested a more inspiring and educational buildup in advance of this year’s inevitably elevated workload.

“I think the best part of last year was that I got to watch how Rox played, how she handled every situation,” said Litchfield. “It was really fun to get my feet wet last year.”

“(Coming into) this year,” she added, “I felt more comfortable knowing how people were going to play and the pace they were going to play at.”

The netminder’s newfound know-how is the Catamounts’ key to propping up what Douville started. Similar growth in other positions will be pivotal in their drive for more passports to the WHEA semifinals in Hyannis, Mass., let alone a bigger splash if they get there.

“Coach (Plumer) always says that the hardest part is still ahead of us,” Litchfield said. “Our goal this year is to just make it farther.

“There’s no question we will have to battle through that quarterfinal to get back to Cape Cod. We just have to keep pushing ourselves.”

This article originally appeared on Along the Boards