Cav blasts team after OT loss to Northeastern: 'We didn't compete in the first period'

UConn head coach Mike Cavanaugh is always even-keeled in his postgame press conferences. He doesn’t gets too high after wins and doesn’t get too low after losses. Look at Friday night: Despite a 4-1 defeat to Northeastern, Cavanaugh took a positive view, saying, “I was actually really happy with the way we played.”

But on Saturday, after UConn dug itself into another early hole and lost its third straight game, he came to the podium with some fire.

Here’s the background: UConn fell behind 3-0 in the first period, then erased that deficit over the final 20 minutes. Carl Dezainde tied the game on a 6-on-5 goal with 59.9 remaining, which forced overtime. UConn ultimately couldn’t completely the comeback and fell 4-3 on a Joe Connor game-winner in the extra period.

Cavanaugh had little interest in giving his team credit for the late rally, though.

“It just pisses me off more,” he said about the comeback. “If we played like that for three periods, I don't think the game's going to overtime. So that's what irritates me. Okay, we came back and we tied it — that's great. But if we don't take that first period off — and for the life of me, I don't know why we are [taking it off] after last night's game. So it's on myself, our coaching staff, our leadership that we gotta be ready to start games and ready to play.”

In that opening period, Northeastern took a 1-0 lead just 3:36 in on a bad mistake from UConn goaltender Kam Hendrickson. The sophomore failed to absorb a relatively harmless shot from the top of the circles and let a rebound trickle out to the top of the crease. To make matters worse, Hendrickson didn’t notice the puck had slipped away, so he reacted too late and couldn’t stop the second chance.

While Cavanaugh acknowledged Hendrickson should’ve made the save, he was far more upset with everyone else on his team afterwards.

“That first goal goes in, it’s an unfortunate goal. It's clearly one that Kam would want back,” he said. “But the whole bench didn't pick him up after that and that was disappointing to me.”

Northeastern then made it 2-0 — Will McIsaac blew a tire in the defensive zone to set up a one-timer for Giacomo Martino — then added a third with just over a minute left in the period. UConn failed to show up at any point during the opening 20 minutes.

“We clearly didn't start on time tonight and I think that's the story of the game, not really our comeback. I was more disappointed that we weren't ready to play this game from the start,” Cavanaugh said.

During the first intermission, the coach delivered a simple message in the locker room.

“We're better than this,” he relayed. “The worst thing you can do as a team is underachieve and we underachieved in that first period… We didn't compete in that first period. We didn't skate. We didn't finish checks. If you want to play here, you're going to have to do those things.”

UConn started to turn it around in the second period. Not much happened for either side during the middle stanza but the hosts at least started to find their game.

“The second period, we played pretty well,” Cavanaugh said. “We started to skate and finish checks. It's a pretty simple formula. I mean, that's the type of team we have to be. So we started to skate and we started to finish checks. When we do that, then we're pretty good.”

Once Jesse Heslop got UConn on the board 4:03 into the third period with his first collegiate goal, the comeback was on.

“That certainly gave us some life,” Cavanaugh said.

Had there been a few more minutes in regulation, UConn might’ve found a winner. But in 3×3 overtime, it lost the opening face-off and couldn’t get a hold of the puck.

“We just never got possession in overtime and we got stuck out there,” Cavanaugh said.

But considering the coach is usually more concerned with performance over results, a win wouldn’t have changed his feelings anyways.

UConn has arrived at a crossroads. At 4-7-1, the Huskies are beginning to take on water. They’ve been outscored 9-0 in the first period alone over their last three games. They’ve given up 4+ goals in 10 of 12 games. They have two regulation victories.

Right now, UConn is barely staying afloat. Now, one good weekend — sweeping UNH or winning the Friendship Four, for example — could be the spark it needs. But if the Huskies continue to struggle, they may not be able to dig themselves out of the hole.

Bright spots

It’d be easier to list the players that Cavanaugh wasn’t mad at after the loss. In fact, he did that himself.

“I thought [Will McIsaac] had an amazing weekend,” he said. “Looking up and down the lineup, I thought (Lirim) Amidovski was excellent. I thought (Carter) Sproule was excellent all weekend. I thought McIsaac was fantastic. (Jacob) Reese gave us really good minutes. Joey Odyniec — what he did back on defense for a guy that's never played defense — I thought he was amazing. Really. Gave us solid, solid minutes. Yeah, he was good. He was good breaking pucks out. He was hard in the corner. He was really good.”

With Amidovski in particular, the freshman forward had been a healthy scratch twice over the two prior weekends against Merrimack and Providence. Despite that, Cavanaugh believes the freshman has turned a corner.

“Sometimes it takes time to learn a new system,” he said. “You know what? He's coming. He was a power forward and he was a force this weekend.”

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