The new year brings a new set of trophies for the UConn men’s hockey team and they’re lined up on the horizon.
CT Ice comes up at Yale on Jan. 23, then the stretch drive for the Hockey East regular-season championship, followed by the conference tournament in Boston and then the NCAA Tournament with the Frozen Four in Las Vegas in April.
“We talk about the ‘four majors,’” coach Mike Cavanaugh said. “We try to play for four majors every year. I talk to the team all the time about it, we have a microscope and a telescope. In the telescope, we have Las Vegas and the Boston Garden, but in the microscope we have the RiverHawks on Friday night.”
The RiverHawks are the next Hockey East opponent, UMass Lowell, who will come to play the Huskies in one of the program’s handful of games at PeoplesBank Arena in Hartford at 7 p.m., following by the Saturday game in Lowell, Mass. As of Wednesday, there were about 4,400 tickets out for the game in Hartford, so nearly twice the usual on-campus crowd.
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UConn (11-5-3), ranked 10th in the latest national poll after a nonconference sweep of LIU-Brooklyn last weekend, is leading the ultracompetitive conference with a 7-3-1 record, good for 22 points, one more than Boston College. A year ago, the Huskies got hot in the second half of the season, won the Connecticut tournament for the first time, earned an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament and, in its first foray, came up a goal short in overtime against Penn State in the regional finals.
With a team that largely stayed intact, UConn is well-positioned for another run.
“Our expectations haven’t changed,” Cavanaugh said. “We certainly feel capable with the team we have of winning those trophies.”
Goalie Tyler Muszelik, who has started 17 of 19 games, leads the conference in goals-against (1.98) and save percentage (.935) as the Huskies have played excellent defense in front of him, with massive Viking Gustaffson Nyberg leading the way with a plus-minus of 18.
UConn has outscored opponents 63-43, and Cavanaugh has again been comfortable rolling four lines onto the ice to keep players fresh and maintain pace. They’ve been doing it with their top line — Joey Muldowney, Ryan Tattle and Jake Percival — in a scoring slump.
“I don’t think it’s going to stay that way for long, which should bode well for us,” Cavanaugh said. “All three are excellent goal scorers, and the fact we’re getting contributions from everybody else is one reason we’ve been successful, because if we’re relying just on them we wouldn’t be scoring the way we are.
“I’m excited to see when they break out, because we should be a dangerous team when that happens.”
Kadan Shahan leads UConn with 15 points, five goals and 10 assists; Tattle has 13, and he and Carlin Dezainde each have seven goals.
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Counting the games this week, there are 13 regular-season games left in Hockey East play. Looking through Cavanaugh’s telescope, there are major tests and high-stakes games coming up. The Huskies play Yale in the first round of CT Ice at Ingalls Rink, and either No. 8 Quinnipiac or Sacred Heart on Jan. 24. The regular-season crown UConn seeks could be decided when they return to PeoplesBank to play Boston College on Feb. 21 to finish the home-and-home weekend series.
“I have a lot of confidence in this team to play very well Friday night, and I try to avoid getting too far past that,” Cavanaugh said. “If you don’t take one game at a time, you’re going to drive yourself crazy. I just try to stay focused on this game, and if we prepare really well, I feel real confident going into that game.
“But looking into the telescope, this team hasn’t given me any reason to believe the regular-season title is pie-in-the-sky thinking; it’s certainly there. If we keep playing the way we’re capable of playing and put in the work, all those goals are attainable.”