STORRS — Tia Chan built up her reflexes and toughness at an early age, and the hard way — her two older brothers firing pucks at her.
“I was on skates at four, my brothers are three and eight years older than me,” Chan says. “They obviously needed a goalie to play street hockey and I wanted to be involved so I was a goalie for them.”
So she is not one to blink or flinch, whether facing a fusillade or one shot with a season on the line. Chan has stopped shots on several continents, in her native Canada, in the Olympics representing China. At UConn, she is reaching the end of a long, groundbreaking career in women’s hockey, one of the campus’ most stellar athletic performers of the decade. Chan is 58-33-13 with 23 shutouts for UConn.
“She’s a rock back there for us,” coach Chris MacKenzie says. “These last three years she’s been awesome, so we’ve been very fortunate to have her.”
Last weekend, Chan stopped 62 of 63 shots in two games against Providence, leading the Huskies to 4-1 and 5-0 victories, pushing them still higher into new territory for the program. The new rankings Monday showed UConn (15-3-2) and No. 5 in the U.S. College Hockey Online poll and in the all-important NCAA Percentage Index, the key metric for tournament selection.
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“I’m extremely happy I came back for my fifth year,” Chan says. “We have some great players, of course, and we’re trying to push for a Hockey East championship and a national championship, it would be amazing to get a chance to go at that. My freshman, even sophomore year, if someone even mentioned those words they would get kind of blown over, and you’d say, ‘oh, whatever, she’s just saying that.’ Now, that’s totally in reach for us.”
Only 11 teams make the NCAA Tournament, and UConn has only made it once. Two years ago, on March 9, 2024, Chan turned in a bravura performance, 79:22 of scoreless hockey, 38 saves, to finally beat Northeastern for the Hockey East tournament championship at the Toscano Family Ice Pavilion. Five days later, Chan turned in another epic, but after 97:09 and 48 saves in game of disputed goals and non-goals, she allowed one past her in the first round of the NCAA Tournament, a 1-0 loss to Minnesota-Duluth. UConn had an apparent winning goal disallowed for off-side, and the winning goal was allowed to stand after a review for interference.
Last season also ended in heartbreak for UConn, after winning the Hockey East regular season title for the first time, with a 3-1 loss to Northeastern in the conference semifinals. By then, Chan had already decided to come back for a fifth season, to wear the captain’s ‘C’ on her No. 88 sweater. And she has been brilliant. leading the nation in save percentage, .953, and is fifth in goals-against, 1.52 per game. UConn plays at Maine Friday and Saturday.
“There’s times when we’re not playing well in front of her,” MacKenzie says, “and she’ll hold us in, keep us in a good spot. There’s time when we’re providing more offense and she doesn’t have to be perfect, that’s a good mix.”
Chan was playing in goal for the Burlington Barracudas, near her hometown of Hamilton, Ontario, where she also played softball and threw the javelin. In the days when contact with recruits was more limited, she had to reach out to UConn’s coaches and was discouraged when she didn’t get an immediate response. But eventually, she learned MacKenzie and his staff were very much interested. When she got to UConn for a visit, she sensed right away it was the right school, but was further impressed to find several pairs of sisters on the team.
“If the program wasn’t a good place, the younger sister wouldn’t have been here,” Chan says. “You’re not sending your younger sister if you don’t like the place, so this place was different than some other places. And I saw the potential to grow.”
One thing that wouldn’t have come up, she remembers, is the possibility of being fifth in the country. Chan arrived at UConn during the pandemic, and made the conference all-rookie team for the truncated 2020-21 season. By then, she had been approached by China’s Olympic officials to help grow the game there. He grandfather was born in China, before coming to the U.S. and then settling in Canada, so she was eligible as a “heritage” player.
“They approached me at the rink and said, ‘we’re hosting the Olympics in 2022 and we want to grow hockey in China,’” Chan says. “They had hardly any rinks, hardly any players. They ran a couple of camps and I went with a bunch of other heritage players and we played against their national team and show China what hockey was, that was the original goal.”
After several years, playing in China and at a developmental program in Russia, it was determined the heritage players could compete for the Chinese national team at the Beijing Olympics in 2022. Chan took the year off from UConn, Chan appeared in the Olympics, stopping 33 of 36 shots in a loss to the Czech Republic.
“The Olympics were an unbelievable opportunity,” she says. “Something no one can pass up.”
After the 2023 World Championships, the Chinese government was ready to field a national team without dual-citizen or heritage players, so playing in the 2026 Winter Games in Milan next month was not an option.
“I can’t blame them,” Chan says. “Our goal was to grow hockey in China and we did that. They’ve built so many rinks there from the time we started, and the number of players who know the game are that much better. The fact they were able to trust their national team players speaks for itself.”
Maybe one day, Chan will be able to play in the Olympics for Team Canada, and she hopes to launch a pro career next season. Right now, she has her degree in Allied Health Sciences and is pursing a Master’s in Exercise Science, focusing on athlete performance as well as leading the Huskies to still higher ground. Hockey East, long a one-bid league, cut back on conference games, allowing each team to schedule three more nonconference games. With four wins in six games against St. Cloud State, Clarkson and Princeton, and wins over Quinnipiac and Yale to capture the Nutmeg Classic trophy, all top-15 teams, UConn has the resume for an at-large bid. They’ve also got a chance to avoid a win-or-go-home scenario in the Hockey East Tournament, and could make a bid to host an NCAA Regional.
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Whenever or wherever it comes down to single-elimination pressure, UConn relies on a goalie who has been there before, and is ready to fight to stonewall ’em to extend the season, and her career, as long as possible.
“The difference is our confidence this year,” Chan says, “we have some trophies under our belt, some really great players, offense, defense, goaltending. The difference is confidence. If we play our game, we have no doubt we can beat any team in the country.”