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 HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.