While Sophie Jaques was welcomed with open arms when she came to Minnesota in the middle of last season, the Frost defender did find one immediate challenge in sharing a team with star forward Taylor Heise. They had to share a nickname.

In 2022, Heise had won the Patty Kazmaier Award while playing for the Minnesota Gophers. A year later, Jaques won the trophy, given annually to the top player in women’s college hockey, while winning the NCAA title for Ohio State.

Heise was already being playfully referred to as “Patty” by her teammates when Jaques entered the chat. Never mind the fact that Frost forward Kendall Coyne-Schofield had also won the Kazmaier, in 2016 when she played at Northeastern.

So, the Frost roster was suddenly crowded with Pattys. With the Frost winning games, and both Heise and Jaques making key contributions, their teammates say they can work out a nickname sharing agreement.

“I think they both can have it at that point,” Frost forward Michaela Cava said. “They’re both incredible hockey players, and they can share it. They can both be Patty, they’re so good and so fun to watch.”

The Frost are back in action Wednesday, looking to close out their five-game, first-round playoff series against Toronto at Xcel Energy Center. Puck drop is set for 6 p.m.

With two goals and two assists in the Frost’s first three playoff games, Jaques is showing off some of the skills that made her a star as a Buckeye, controlling the play from the blue line, playing smart defense, and unleashing a scary-hard shot from time to time.

While she comes across as soft-spoken off the ice, Heise said in the locker room, on the bench and on the ice, Jaques’ teammates see a strong player who is known above all for her confidence.

“Hers is unwavering, truly. Say she gets her pocket picked once, she’s going to get (the puck) back. She’s going to skate it all the way down the ice, and she’s going to deke around a defender,” Heise said. “She has what we call sometimes a magnet. The puck sticks on her stick like no one else’s. She’s got great stickhandling skills, she can skate it up the ice. Plus, she can see the play.”

Starting her pro career in Boston, where she played in seven games without recording a point, Jaques, 24, was the centerpiece of the first trade in PWHL history when Minnesota acquired her one-third of the way through the 2023-24 season. She put up good numbers after the trade and was an important defensive player in Minnesota’s run to the 2024 league title.

She acknowledged, however, that switching time zones and teams midseason presented some challenges, and Jaques’ offensive numbers more than doubled — team-high 15 assists, seven goals in 25 regular-season games — in her first full season with the Frost.

“Last year, she really came on once she got here. Her game picked up. Her confidence level picked up. She kind of got back to where she was before,” Frost coach Ken Klee said. “And then she’s just continuing. You look at the points she put up this year. She’s still trying to take pride in her own zone and being an offensive threat when she can.”

Originally from Toronto, Jaques has gotten to face her hometown team two consecutive years in the opening round of the playoffs. While she relishes the chance to play near where she learned the game, Jaques admitted that with the Sceptres playing well, tickets are harder and harder to come by for all of the family and friends who turn out when the Frost visit.

“It’s good to see how the team has grown in Toronto, but I’m happy to still get a good group out to our games,” she said.

And with the Frost ending the regular season with must-win games in Ottawa and Boston, then traveling right to Toronto for the first two playoff games, playing close to home also meant playing close to her parents’ washer and dryer — a bonus.

“We had been on the road for about eight days, and then we still had about seven games left. So it made sense to get a load of laundry in, for sure,” Jaques said.

Sophie Jaques #16 of the Minnesota Frost skates against Kristin O’Neill #43 of the Montreal Victoire during the second period at Place Bell on Jan. 17, 2025 in Laval, Quebec, Canada. The Montreal Victoire defeated the Minnesota Frost 4-2. (Photo by Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)

By JESSE BEDAYN

A rock climber who fell an estimated 400 feet while descending a steep gully in Washington’s North Cascades mountains survived the fall that killed his three companions, hiked to his car in the dark and then drove to a pay phone to call for help, authorities said Tuesday.

The surviving climber, who has not been publicly identified, extricated himself from a tangle of ropes, helmets and other equipment after the accident and made the trek despite suffering internal bleeding and head trauma, Okanogan County Undersheriff Dave Yarnell said.

Falls like this leading to three deaths are extremely rare, and many details about what led up to it still aren’t known, said Cristina Woodworth, who leads the sheriff’s search and rescue team. Seven years ago, two climbers were killed in a fall on El Capitan at Yosemite National Park.

The group of four — including the victims, aged 36, 47 and 63 — were scaling the Early Winters Spires, jagged peaks split by a cleft that’s popular with climbers in the North Cascade Range, about 160 miles northeast of Seattle. The surviving climber was hospitalized in Seattle.

The group of four met with disaster that night when the anchor securing their ropes appears to have failed as they were descending in a steep gully, trying to reach the spire’s base, Yarnell said.

They plummeted for about 200 feet into a slanted gulch and then tumbled another 200 feet before coming to rest, he said. Authorities believe the group had been ascending but turned around when they saw a storm approaching.

A three-person search and rescue team reached the site of the fall Sunday, Woodworth said. The team used coordinates from a device the climbers had been carrying, which had been shared by a friend of the men.

Once they found the site, they called in a helicopter to remove the bodies one at a time because of the rough terrain, Woodworth said.

On Monday, responders poured over the recovered equipment trying to decipher what caused the fall, Woodworth said. They found a piton — basically a small metal spike that is driven into rock cracks or ice and used as anchors by climbers — that was still clipped into the climbers’ ropes.

Pitons are oftentimes left in walls. They can be there for years or even decades, and they may become less secure over time.

“It looked old and weathered, and the rest of their equipment looked newer, so we are making the assumption that it was an old piton,” Woodworth said.

Rock climbers secure themselves by ropes to anchors, such as pitons or other climbing equipment. The ropes are intended to arrest their fall if they should slip, and typically climbers use backup anchors, said Joshua Cole, a guide and co-owner of North Cascades Mountain Guides, who has been climbing in the area for about 20 years.

Generally, it would be unusual to rappel off a single piton, said Cole, adding that it is still unknown exactly what happened on the wall that night.

“We eventually, if possible, would like to get more information from surviving party,” Woodworth said.

The spires are a popular climbing spot. The route the climbers were taking, said Cole, was of moderate difficulty, and requires moving between ice, snow and rock.

But the conditions, the amount of ice versus rock for example, can change rapidly with the weather, he said, even week to week or day to day, changing the route’s risks.

Bedayn reported from Denver.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV has taken over the Vatican’s official social media handles, with a first Instagram post on Tuesday repeating the first words he said to the world as pope: “Peace be with you all!”

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The @Pontifex – Pope Leo XIV post featured some of the photos that have documented the first days of history’s first American pope.

The Vatican said it was archiving the posts from Pope Francis ’ 12-year papacy. On X, the new account didn’t appear to be active Tuesday.

The Vatican launched the @Pontifex handle in 2012 during the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI. It now comes in a variety of nine languages — English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Polish, Arabic, and Latin — and counts a combined 52 million followers.

Past popes didn’t actually send the posts, which were curated by the Vatican.

The former Cardinal Robert Prevost occasionally posted on X in an account started in 2011. It had been dormant since July 2023 but came back to life earlier this year to share criticism of Trump administration migration policies and comments by Vice President JD Vance.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

By LOLITA C. BALDOR

WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plans to slash the number of senior military leaders across the services would cut more than 120 high-ranking officer jobs in the active duty and National Guard, including as many as nine top general slots.

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Based on the percentages outlined by Hegseth and his senior staff, 20% of the 44 authorized top active duty general and admiral jobs would be eliminated, along with 10% of the more than 800 one-, two- and three-star positions, according to numbers compiled by The Associated Press.

The cuts — about nine positions among four-star generals and 80 jobs across the other leadership levels — would affect dozens of active duty officers scattered across the five services as well as those who are in joint command jobs, such as those overseeing Africa, the Middle East and Europe. The changes would eliminate 33 senior National Guard positions.

The cuts are part of a broader government-wide campaign to slash spending and personnel across federal agencies that is being pushed by President Donald Trump’s administration and ally Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

According to Hegseth and others, the intent of the military job reductions isn’t to reduce the overall size of the force but to thin out the higher ranks and offset those cuts with additional troops at lower levels. While the overall number of service members may not drop, the salary costs will be lower.

Some Democratic members of Congress have criticized Hegseth’s plans as an attempt to politicize the military and oust leaders that don’t agree with the Trump administration. The changes also come as the world is roiled by conflicts, including the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, and as the U.S. has troops deployed in Syria and elsewhere.

Shifting leadership responsibilities

Military officials expect that as various jobs are downgraded — for example from a lieutenant general in charge to a major general or brigadier general — more leadership responsibilities will fall on colonels or Navy captains and other subordinates.

And while many of the job cuts will come through attrition, as senior officers retire or move on, the services say they will have the flexibility to move people into higher priority positions and get rid of less critical posts.

“More generals and admirals does not equal more success,” Hegseth said in a video describing his plan. “This is not a slash and burn exercise meant to punish high-ranking officers. Nothing could be further from the truth. This has been a deliberative process.”

Calling it the “Less Generals, More GIs” plan, he said the department will make “prudent reductions.”

How the cuts will hit the military services

The Army, which is the largest service, is allowed to have a maximum of 219 high-ranking general officers and is expected to absorb a higher number of the cuts, while the Marine Corps will probably see little impact at the very top. There are only two Marine four-star generals, and the tiny Space Force also only has two.

“The Marine Corps, with our general officers, like our civilians and senior executives, is by far the leanest service,” said Lt. Col. Josh Benson, a Marine spokesman. “Due to the already lean nature of the general officers in the Marine Corps, any cuts to Marine general officers will have an outsized impact to the Corps relative to other services.”

He said nearly one-third — or 21 — of Marine generals hold two or three jobs each, and as many as 10 positions are already empty.

Army leaders, meanwhile, have already developed plans to merge or close headquarters units and staff. As many as 40 general officer slots could be cut as a result, officials have said.

The joint jobs would include leaders at regional commands, such as those in Europe, the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East, as well as administrative or functional commands, such as Cyber Command and Special Operations Command.

Under the law, there currently can be no more than 232 of those joint officers, and they’re spread across all the services.

It’s unclear how many of the cuts those jobs would absorb, versus the slots in each of the services. But officials have talked about merging some commands as the Pentagon reviews its overall leadership structure.

In addition to the joint command jobs, Congress stipulates the maximum number of high-ranking general officers in the services: 219 in the Army, 171 in the Air Force, 21 in the Space Force, 64 in the Marine Corps and 150 flag officers in the Navy.

All combined, the services can’t have more than 27 four-star officers, 153 three stars, 239 two stars and 210 one stars.

National Guard review and cuts

The decrease in the National Guard stems from a review done by Guard leaders last year that identified more than 30 positions that could be cut among the 133 general officer jobs spread out across the government. There are about 30 general officers in the National Guard Bureau headquarters staff, and the rest are assigned to jobs in other federal agencies, including the FBI, CIA and the military commands.

Guard officials described their plan to Hegseth and Pentagon leaders, and it was approved. According to officials, it would result in six jobs cut from Guard Bureau staff and the rest from other military and government posts.

The adjutants general who run the Guard in each state are chosen by and work for the governors and so are not part of any cuts. They are largely one- and two- star officers.