Been to games in Hartford and no question the atmosphere is much much better even thought Bport is a nicer facility. Good game but no juice at all in the building. Not sure why we are playing there. As for the game. We desperately need a scorer. That has to be high on Cav's list for recruiting. Lowell was the better team but if UConn had won it wouldn't have been luck
Were you there? Just curious. I agree that there was very little energy in the arena for the final, the crowd for the Sat night game was sparse, but more energetic. As for the scoring, and rest - not sure I agree with the "desperate" need of a scorer. I've decided to follow UCONN hockey a little more closely with the debacle the football program has become. I'll wait until my eyes can observe what happens when we start next season against Villanova, before I really get into that again. The past 4 seasons have just been too much.
But for the past weekend, it was two entirely different games UCONN hockey games I watched, and again, I'm no hockey expert, but I know sports, I know competition and I know what it means to be focused on performing physical tasks as a team. The game against UNION was entirely different than the game against UMASS Lowell. The UNION game was sloppy and full of penalties. It was slow paced and lots of speed/size mismatches. UNION seemed to be a very fast team individually - when it comes to individual skating, but aside from maybe 4-5 guys on the roster, we outsized them and the game as a whole was played slow. They were faster individually, and we needed a lot of work from our goalie to stop them because of that speed, they were getting shots off, but we were able to score 3 goals and win. The UMASS Lowell team was a really good team. Everybody on that team was big - BIG - and fast, and we needed the goalie to keep us in it more than they needed their goalie again. But we skated with them the entire game - and it was a very fast, and fluid game - disciplined, there were no penalties. It was a one goal game until I think 2 minutes left and the one goal was a great shot by what turned out to be the tournament MVP. With the clock running down, and down by 1, we started taking chances to create scoring opps, and they came up with a 2 on 2 break out of the middle of the ice, and even though the defenders had the 2 UMASS players wrapped up, they were able to get a pass across from the boards in front of the net that their player was able to chip up and past the goalie to go up 2-0. Just a great play. In football it happens all the time, you do everything right, and it just comes down to who makes the plays, and who doesn't. We pulled the goalie after that and gave up the open netter. ANd it did piss me off that with 1 min to go, down 3-0, the goalie went back in. No matter how much anyone tries to explain that to me, I won't understand it.
So, I'm sure the team can benefit from having a great goal scorer, every team would, but I'm not sure how desperate that need is - based on what I can observe, and what I've been told by people I trust about hockey - the future for UCONN in this sport is very bright. We are in year one of really recruiting to where we should be in the league and division we are in, and we have a coach that has demonstrated the ability to put a team on the ice that can not just compete with, but also beat the competition we face - which happens to be among the best in the country.
We've already beaten several ranked opponents, and over the past weekend, beat the defending national champ, and the next day, I saw us play against a team that is ranked in the top 10 nationally, and skate with them start to finish, and really the only difference was 2 plays - where they made plays and we didn't. We had opportunities to score as well, but failed when we had the chance.
I'll tell you what, we didn't win the trophy, and I don't like losing - but I was entertained by good athletic competition.
