How a program reset led UConn to its best season ever

In the spring of 2024, a skeleton crew of UConn men’s hockey players gathered in the weight room of Toscano Family Ice Forum for the team’s first workout ahead of the upcoming campaign. Just 13 of 27 players from the Huskies’ previous roster remained.

“I remember it being a small spring workout compared to what it used to be,” associate head coach Tyler Helton said.

Already coming off a disappointing campaign, UConn then experienced significant roster turnover that sent it reeling. The program that head coach Mike Cavanaugh spent 11 years building suddenly appeared to have some major cracks.

At least, that was the perception externally. Inside the building, UConn sports performance director Moe Butler set the remaining 13 players straight.

“This is your group,” she told them. “You guys decide what you want to do and you take ownership of it, but it starts right now.”

That workout proved to be the turning point in a tumultuous offseason for UConn. In that moment, the energy shifted. The frustration and bitterness from the previous season dissipated, replaced by newfound hope for what lay ahead.

“Seeing everybody that was left getting after it in the gym, a fire was lit under our asses,” Joey Muldowney said. “Right from there, that was when that belief started.”

The wheels never came off the program as many expected. Instead, UConn rebounded with its best season ever in 2024-25. The Huskies piled on a program-record 23 wins, captured their first Connecticut Ice crown (and only the second trophy under Cavanaugh) and reached the NCAA Tournament for the first time. Multiple players set program records along the way, too.

The fact that it was built from the rubble of the previous campaign was no coincidence.

“It was a great reset for our program,” Cavanaugh said. “It really woke a lot of us up here. Maybe we were taking too many things for granted.”

A fractured locker room

Entering 2023-24, most expected the Huskies to take a long-awaited step forward. They had finished top five in Hockey East in five of the last six seasons, were a top-25 Pairwise team for three straight years and owned one of the best overall records nationally in that same span.

They remained one of only a handful of programs never to make the NCAA Tournament — and the only one from a power conference — but that seemed primed to change. UConn featured a roster laden with NHL talent and was coming off back-to-back 20-win seasons. The year prior, the Huskies exceeded expectations with a young team and only just missed out on the 16-team field.

But instead of breaking through, UConn regressed. The Huskies consistently produced high shot totals but struggled to score — particularly at home. They were shut out seven times and held to a single goal on five more occasions. They finished eighth in Hockey East — their worst mark since 2018-19 — and were bounced in the league quarterfinals.

As UConn’s season fell apart, the locker room went with it. What started as a unified group fractured into a collection of individuals as players prioritized their own self-interests over the good of the team. Moping about playing time. Bemoaning a lack of production. Finger-pointing.

“When things go bad, I think people seem to revert back to being more individual instead of leaning on your teammates a little bit more,” Helton said. “At times, I think people were more concerned about their own stuff than being immersed in the team. Dealing with that was difficult. We didn't really have to deal with that before at any point.”

Try as they did, the veteran leaders couldn’t keep it together. The team’s chemistry deteriorated as the season progressed.

“I'm fortunate to grow up with an amazing family around me and two amazing parents where, if I was like that as a child, that doesn't fly,” Hudson Schandor said. “I was always for the team, no matter what. I was looking out for everyone else all the time. I think I realized more than ever last year that some people just aren't raised that way. They are very individualized.”

Even though UConn played its best hockey at the end of the year, the late signs of life couldn’t fix the damage that had already been done. The frustrations from the team’s underperformance and inability to score combined with internal strife weighed heavy on everyone.

Most were glad to see the season end.

“It's college, right? It's supposed to be the best four years your life,” Muldowney said. “But after last year, I was okay with going home.”

“It was so chaotic and a little bit toxic at times,” Schandor added.

That feeling extended beyond the players, too.

“That whole season was just exhausting for everyone,” Helton said. “I think expectations, personalities, it just got to the end of the year and everyone was just ready to get away for a little bit. I think was the first year in a while that I didn't love coaching that much.”

Then came the exodus. UConn lost six players to graduation, another to the NHL and one to retirement. When the transfer portal opened on April 1, the floodgates opened. Matthew Wood, Samu Salminen and Arsenii Sergeev — three NHL picks and key players — entered immediately. Two others eventually joined them.

Though some of the departures were anticipated, others blindsided the coaching staff.

“At first it was shocking,” Cavanaugh admitted. “There's anger and there's disappointment.”

“I felt pretty bad. I was like, ‘What the hell are we gonna do?’” Helton added.

The discord didn’t end with the season, either. Although the games were over and players begun to jump ship and find new homes, the team remained together on campus through the end of the spring semester. At times, it was impossible to escape the negativity.

“There were guys that we wouldn't really hang out with a ton during the year and then after the year, they're running into our place going, ‘Oh did you hear he’s transferring?’” Schandor relayed. “You see the guys out walking to class and they're wearing the hoodie of that team [they’re transferring to] around campus. It’s like, ‘What are we doing here, guys? What is happening?’”

In looking back at that turbulent year, UConn hasn’t tried to pass all the problems off on players who left the program. Not everyone who left created issues — guys like Chase Bradley, Andrew Lucas and others helped restore the culture — while a few players who returned needed to do some soul-searching.

“There's some guys that left and had success at other places. I'm not even talking really about those guys,” Schandor said. ”A lot of the guys [who turned individualistic] actually were still on our team this year.”

At first, the volume of outgoing players sent shockwaves both throughout the program and around the country. But as the initial reactions subsided, UConn started to feel the turnover could be beneficial. In some cases, it would be addition by subtraction.

“Talking to people on the outside, some were like, ‘This is gonna be the best thing for your program,’” Helton said. “That helped, for sure.”

The Huskies still had plenty of holes to fill: Four of its six top point producers, half the defensive corps and both starting goaltenders. But instead of trying to replace talent with talent, they put a premium on character. They weren’t looking for just any hockey players. They wanted guys who fit the program.

Jake Richard put it best in his end-of-season meeting with the coaches.

“I was like, ‘The guys that want to be here are going to be here and that's what we need. I think it's going to work better and it's going to lead to better results,’” he recalled.

UConn still had one key piece missing, though.

UConn’s “most important recruit”

John Spetz didn’t need to be convinced to use his fifth year of eligibility at UConn. When the 2023-24 season ended, the coaching staff offered the defenseman a chance to return and he made his decision in a matter of minutes.

“I've never really been someone to leave a team,” he said.

That wasn’t the case with his fellow classmate Schandor. The team’s shortcomings and the turmoil from the season weighed heavily on the captain who had so often been a beacon of positivity in the locker room.

At that point in his career, Schandor had already given plenty to the program. He racked up the second-most points in UConn’s Hockey East Era and wore a letter on his jersey in two straight seasons. So when his dad encouraged him to explore new opportunities, he was open to the idea and considered transferring elsewhere for his final year of eligibility.

Cavanaugh knew that couldn’t happen.

“He was the most important recruit we had,” the coach said. “If anybody could galvanize a team, I knew it was him. I spent a lot of time (getting Schandor back). That was my main concern.”

Schandor wrestled with the decision and wasn’t even present for that pivotal spring workout with Butler. While the coaching staff desperately wanted him back, they also needed time to find a replacement if he went elsewhere. Hee was given two weeks to decide.

During that time, Schandor kept an open line of communication. He had lunch with Helton, who gave him the soft sell as the two discussed his options together. Cavanaugh took a different tact and challenged him, hoping to push his buttons as a competitor. He brought up his own decision to spurn Boston College and stay at UConn back in 2022.

“I kept saying to him, ‘Hey, you have unfinished business.’ … I talked about my thing [with BC] like, ‘Hey, I had an opportunity to leave and that might’ve been the easy thing to do.’ But I want players that are going to choose hard… You can go transfer to Michigan and that might be the easy way (to make the tournament). But think of what it would be like if you come back and you can get UConn to a national tournament. How would that define your career?’”

As final weekend before his Monday deadline dawned, Schandor remained undecided. The options swirled in his head until Muldowney and Richard closed the deal during a dinner at Fenton River Grill in Mansfield.

“They looked at me in the eyes, both of them with these cute little smugs, and they go, ‘Hey, man, we really need you to come back and lead us next year,’” Schandor remembered. “For two kids that were freshmen to look at me and say that, that was it for me. That's when I knew — right there. I'm like, ‘We got some sick puppies that are gonna could be coming back here and we're gonna have a lot of fun.’”

At the time, those closest to Schandor weren’t sure he made the right choice.

“My parents — still to this day — are like, ‘Why did you make that decision? Why did you go back?’ I don't know if they were for it entirely at the start. They were questioning it a little bit after all that happened that previous year,” he said. “It's hard to explain a look in kids’ eyes when they tell you something like that.”

With Schandor officially back, the Huskies were full steam ahead. They hit the transfer portal for four players and brought in 10 freshman — 14 newcomers on a 28-player roster. When the dust settled, UConn believed it had built a team capable of competing for a spot in the NCAA Tournament.

“I liked a lot of the players that we had coming back. I liked a lot of the players we had coming in. I didn't think we needed a lot,” Cavanaugh said. “I thought we were going to have a good team.”

The power of friendship

Once Spetz and Schandor signed on for fifth years, Cavanaugh handed them the keys to leadership. The team had no true seniors, so nobody besides the pair had more than two years of experience in the program.

They didn’t take their responsibilities lightly. Given how the locker room splintered the previous season, they set out to fix the culture by bringing the team closer together. They knew they couldn’t be passive and see if it happened naturally, either.

“You don't just show up on August 25th and you’re a team. That's not how it works,” Schandor said.

They started by building a foundation. Spetz came up with “The Playbook” — a manual for how UConn men’s hockey players are expected to act. The goal was to rid the locker room of individuals and make sure everyone understood and upheld the expectations of the program.

“If you can create that culture within some stories and and standards, it allows things to go smoothly,” Spetz said. “I think that's what it did from day one.”

The defenseman started it, though Schandor pitched in plenty of ideas and a few alumni contributed as well. The first story set the tone for the entire season. It’s a firefighter’s creed — You go into a fire together and no one leaves until everyone’s out. It eventually morphed into the Huskies’ motto: You go, we go.

The message was clear: No more individuals. Everything is about the team.

Initially, Schandor and Spetz worried about how the other players would receive The Playbook. There were some nerves when they read the first story aloud during a players-only meeting, though those quickly melted away.

“Everyone bought into the readings. You could see it on guys faces after like, ‘Damn, that was pretty cool,’” he said. “Right from day one when we had those guys doing that, you could tell it was like, ‘Okay, these guys are wired a little bit differently than some of our teams in the past.’”

The Playbook was just the start, though. It wouldn’t bring the team together on its own. Instead, Spetz had a simple plan: They would do everything together. Everything.

“John would almost drive me crazy sometimes because he's like, ‘I'm telling you right now, we just gotta go and we just gotta be together,’” Schandor laughed. “I'm like, ‘John, it's Sunday afternoon. Let's just hang out. I got nothing going on. I got some homework.’ He’d be like, ‘No, we gotta go be with the team — everyone. Let's just go and be together.’ I'm like, ‘This guy's insane. He's insane. He's gotta be with the whole team all the time.’”

Despite the initial skepticism, the Huskies spent as much time together as they could. Some outings required significant planning, such as a team trip trip to a UConn football game, but most were spur-of-the-moment, casual hangouts. It really didn’t matter what they did. They just had to be together.

“All the little things just add up,” Spetz said. “I think in college, it's your last chance to do it. So why not?”

The tricked worked. UConn accelerated the team-building process and quickly forged tight bonds between everyone on the roster.

“That brought us so close before the season even started,” Schandor said. “We formed as a team and then we ran through a little bit of conflict early because we did all this stuff together as a group.”

Once the season came around, the Huskies were unbreakable. When adversity hit — and there was plenty — the players leaned on each other instead of turning inward. Everyone put the team’s success above their own. If anyone stepped out of line, teammates were quick to correct them.

Above all else, UConn followed its north star: winning.

“Everyone was on the same page right away and there were no egos,” Helton said. “Everyone just wanted to win.”

Changes on the ice

The players weren’t the only ones who had to make changes over the offseason. The coaching staff had to look in the mirror, too.

During Cavanaugh’s first 10 years on the job, UConn established itself as one of the hardest-working teams in the league. That how the Huskies survived during the program’s early days in Hockey East since they didn’t have the talent to compete with the likes of BU, BC and Providence.

“The only way we had a chance to be in games was compete our balls off, play hard and play with good foundational habits,” Helton explained.

Effort had always been a baseline requirement for Cavanaugh. But as he tried to lighten up and be less of a stickler with the players off the ice, he let that attitude bleed onto the ice, too.

“I'm probably not as stringent on some things that I used to be. However, I do feel like a year ago, I got away from some of the core principles that I believe in,” he said. “There were some things that were happening in practice a couple years ago… I'd be like, ‘Ah, it's not a big deal. I'm not going to make a big deal about that right now. I'll address that later.’ And you don't address it later, then it compounds and then it gets worse.”

“There's an old saying, ‘If you're watching it, you're coaching it.’ I was watching it but letting it go and not addressing it.”

So Cavanaugh held himself accountable. He went back to his roots and stopped letting things slide.

“If I saw something that I didn't think was going to help our team win, I addressed it right away,” he said. “On the ice, I went back to being the coach I wanted to be.”

The rest of the program followed Cavanaugh’s lead. The assistant coaches maintained the standard on the ice. Butler had no qualms about calling people out during weight room sessions. Rink manager Mike Iacampo made sure the facility received the respect it deserved. The same went for equipment manager Chris Iacampo and the gear. Athletic trainer Ed Blair set and upheld expectations for recovery and treatment.

Most importantly, the players policed themselves. Everyone was empowered to speak up when they felt it was necessary.

“It took a whole village to keep everybody accountable,” Schandor said. “All these little things add up over the season. You can see stuff seep in, especially the year before… The whole staff — everyone from top to bottom, from Cav to Ed to Moe to Camps [Iacampo] — they all did a great job of holding everybody to a really high standard this year.”

UConn also made some tactical changes. Nick Peruzzi joined the coaching staff and provided a fresh perspective. He brought new ideas with him and took over the penalty kill, which finished tied for first nationally with nine shorthanded goals.

Meanwhile, Cavanaugh viewed the power play as a culprit in the team’s goal-scoring woes the year prior and vowed to overhaul the unit — particularly how it was coached. The head coach handed the reigns to Helton and the Huskies ultimately converted at a 23.1 percent clip, 17th-best in the country, and scored 17 times in a 19-game stretch during the second half.

UConn blew past even the most rosy expectations. After an up-and-down first half, the Huskies took off in the new year.

“When we came back after Christmas, there was this serene clarity of, ‘We're ready,’” Peruzzi said.

From January on, they ripped off an eighth-game unbeaten streak that included a series victory at Maine — the only team to do so at Alfond Arena last season — and their first Connecticut Ice trophy.

Despite being picked to finish ninth in the preseason poll — with some outlets even projecting a last-place finish — UConn earned the fourth seed in the Hockey East Tournament. The Huskies beat Providence in the quarterfinals to secure their second-ever trip to the semifinals at TD Garden, where they destroyed BU. While they fell to Maine in the championship game, the season didn’t end there.

For the first time, UConn didn’t need the league’s automatic bid to make the NCAA Tournament but instead comfortably made the field as the sixth overall seed. The Huskies thrashed in-state rival Quinnipiac 4-1 in the opener before the magic eventfully ran out in an overtime loss to Penn State.

The dream season was over, though its legacy will be felt for years to come.

“What happened last year sets a very good foundation and reaffirms a standard that we need to be in touch with at all times moving forward,” Peruzzi said.

One step back, four steps forward

In the summer of 2024, Cavanaugh went golfing with Geno Auriemma, a close friend who happens to be UConn women’s basketball’s head coach and a 12-time national championship. The two talked about the disappointing season, how Cavanaugh expected the team to take a step forward only to move backwards.

To Cavanaugh’s surprise, Auriemma related to those feelings. In 1991, UConn women’s basketball reached its first Final Four. Despite graduating key players, the Huskies went a better-than-expected 23-11 and reached the second round of the NCAA Tournament in 1992. The next year, they faltered with an 18-11 record and were knocked out in the first round.

But from there, UConn made the Elite Eight in 1994, won the national championship in 1995 and went on to become the most dominant program in women’s basketball history. The moral?

“Sometimes you have to take a step back to go forward again,” Auriemma told Cavanaugh.

That certainly proved true in the journey of the UConn men’s hockey program. The 2023-24 season felt like the beginning of the end for a program that for so long seemed to be on the rise. As it turned out, it was a much-needed reset that allowed the Huskies to fly higher than ever before.

“We took one step back but we probably took four steps forward,” Cavanaugh said.