Timing is everything in life. Or at least almost everything.
 
As the most talented team in the MAAC (IMHO) which had not been playing up
to potential all year long, UConn could not have picked a better time to
start playing well together. This weekend they were superb against
Mercyhurst and then Iona. The 6-1 score against Iona today tells the true
tale. It had taken Coach Bruce Marshall and his assistants all season long
to integrate a talented group of freshmen into a seasoned lineup, but the
final result was superb. For the second year in a row, an ex-ECAC East team
with no scholarships and no Canadian players, and this year additionally no
players AT ALL on any of the MAAC all-star teams, wound up winning it all!
Who'd a-thunk it???
 
As most folks know, I don't report on UConn's games. Jim Connelly of USCHO
and Mark Pukalo of the Hartford Courant do that better than I could ever
hope to. I review games from a fan's perspective instead. This is today's
review.
 
The game started tensely with both teams very tight and very little flow to
the game. It was, of course, the MAAC championship game and the seniors'
last game of their careers, but it was also their first on TV. UConn was
playing very conservatively dumping and chasing while Iona was a bit looser
and had the better of the play. Iona got on the board first, but a few
minutes later UConn got a powerplay and looked very sharp to tie the score
with a man advantage. As we Huskies fans were going wild with delight, I
smiled inwardly at the thought of a remark I had made a week before on the
USCHO message board about the UConn lack of a PP (they had gone 0 for 8
against Sacred Heart). Perish that thought:-):-)
 
The first period ended with the score tied at one, the shots something like
12-5 Iona, and a substantial territorial advantage by the Gaels. Senerchia
had accomplished two complete stonings on grade A-prime chances by the
Gaels, but strangely, other than that, UConn almost looked like they had
the better of the opportunities. In addition, and most importantly, UConn
kept chugging methodically through four lines and making big hits. That
style of play was like money in the bank despite the TV time-outs which no
one was used to in the MAAC. (Gosh, they must have sold a lot of ads for
that thing!!)
 
In the second period the Huskies got their game legs under them quickly and
started to fly. Iona's run and gun style cost them dearly as they gave up
several odd man rushes. UConn stayed with a long bench and continued to
deal out some punishing hits. At the end of the period it was 4-1 UConn,
and we fans just knew that with eight seniors on the team that UConn would
not let the game get away in the third.
 
In the third period UConn had obviously realized that it had enough goals
to win. Dumping it in deep at every opportunity, off the boards and out on
the first touch in the defensive end, and a 1-2-2 forecheck were the order
of the day. The hitting continued and it was obviously taking the starch
out of Iona who by now looked a little leg weary. UConn scored a couple of
goals off opportunistic poaching at center ice to send the Husky Hockey
Faithful into ecstasy. As the closing minutes wound down with the Huskies
killing off a Gaels' PP without a shot on goal, I started to think about
all the good times in the last decade of UConn hockey.
 
I thought of one very cold February night more than a decade ago as Dorothy
and I were two of about 30 people who watched a stirring UConn comeback
against a tenacious North Adams State team. I remember pounding the glass
with heavily gloved hands on the occasion of the GWG.  A year or two later,
Brian Krygier's 219th career point. Telling DJ LeBlanc's Mom in -10 F wind
how proud we were that her son was a local kid doing so well. Ryan Equale's
blazingly hard slapshot which by itself won games. Michael Schultz' penalty
killing. The fire in the warming house. How some of us would spend hours
before an ECAC playoff game calling youth hockey contacts to pull together
a good crowd. The forechecking and hitting of Jamie Venezia. The ECAC East
RS Title in 1992 and the home playoff game against Norwich. And on and on.
But most importantly, how far the UConn program has come since those days.
 
When the final buzzer went off,  there was pandemonium. The Faithful went
wild. UConn had done the impossible. They had pulled together as a team and
won the whole damn thing. Wonderful!!
 
-- Dick Tuthill
 
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