As the man said, if the UConn Huskies didn't have bad luck, they'd have no luck at all. Coach Bruce Marshall had his Huskies squad flying last night and racking up yet another impressive shot total (42-22) against a much improved Iona Gaels team. A full sixty minutes of intense effort to boot. Yet try as they might, all they could come away with was a point. And lucky that. With only a minute to go in OT the Gaels somehow missed a wide open net from point blank range. Not to be outdone, the Huskies raced down the ice and returned the same exact favor. A wild and woolly and very exciting evening. The mood on the UConn bench appeared somber, focused, and very businesslike. The puck movement was much crisper and quicker than the past two weekends with a lot of effective one touch tick-tack-toe movement. The shots from the point were pretty much on target and on the ice. The right stuff. More than twice, however, UConn could have put the game away with a quick and simple whack at the puck on net from in close. Most memorable was Ryan Murphy's bid for his second of the night from fifteen feet with a wide open net and no chance of recovery by the goalie. Murphy turned to his caddie to make sure he didn't have too much club, addressed the puck, and finally hit it. It traveled about a foot and a half before it hit a stick hazard inserted at the last second by an Iona player. To be fair, the puck came out to Murphy a little close to his skates, but still .... Nonetheless, it was good to see Murphy score his first since returning to the Huskies. He has a history of being a sniper, so if he gets hot watch out. I am sure that the coaching staff at UConn must be pulling their hair out about the way their squad has completely dominated some teams recently and yet come away with fewer points than would be commensurate with their performance. They certainly played well enough to win last night. As a completely casual and detached observer I can't offer much, although I haven't seen many deflections on UConn's scoring attempts recently. Root cause for that? Probably several. And I would also note that UConn seems to have inadvertently found a way to take the home crowd completely out of the game in their effort to make the game entertaining for the patrons. At every whistle until every drop of the puck, the sound system pumps out music at a rather loud level. This can range from entertaining (when the hip-hop is kept to a minimum) to excruciating (all hip-hop). In any event, nobody in the crowd can make themselves heard in that environment, so UConn might as well be playing their home games on neutral ice as at Storrs. UConn does a great job in making the hockey crowd feel welcome and have a good time at the rink. It's a very friendly place, in fact. But perhaps they could try just a little less hard in this area. Well, next week UConn will face AIC. One question will be which AIC squad will show up. The one which last week defeated the league leaders QC, or the one which this week lost to previously winless Fairfield? I would not bet on the latter as AIC has a long long history of playing UConn tough. The Huskies have simply got to just keep working hard. Good things will come. -- Dick Tuthill HOCKEY-L is for discussion of college ice hockey; send information to [log in to unmask], The College Hockey Information List.