Weekly Roundup: UConn hits the pause button

Plus some important updates about the UConn Hockey Hub.

January 11, 2021

Welcome to the UConn Hockey Hub newsletter, which catches you up on all the stories, trends, and anything else you might have missed, along with some quick takes and leftover notes from the weekend.

Subscriber news

  • The shutdown threw us for a loop last week and we didn’t end up recording a podcast, so we’ll have two for you this week. One will discuss the program pause, the UNH series, and all the other news. The second will look at the season from a wider perspective and a preview of the “second half.”

  • Since we won’t have any game coverage for the foreseeable future, we’ll try to get the recruiting profiles up.

  • We’ll also use this time to hold our first subscriber Q&A. If you have questions, either reply directly to this email, shoot me a DM on Twitter or send my a private message on Patreon. Any of those work.

  • Important announcement: We’ll be sending out a survey soon to all subscribers about the Hub in order to get some feedback about how we’ve done through the first six weeks of the season. Please, please, PLEASE fill it out. It’ll not only help us out a ton, but we’ll also use the responses to improve the content you see on here as well.

Shutdown thoughts

  • First and foremost, the health and safety of whoever tested positive along with the rest of the program is paramount.

  • This doesn’t appear to be UConn’s first shutdown based on how Mike Cavanaugh described his preseason as “fractured” with “quarantines and sitting out and contact tracing.” This is just the first during the regular season — and hopefully the last.

  • Though it’s obviously of lesser importance, let’s look at the hockey implications:

  • If UConn has to quarantine for 14 days, that means it can return to the ice on Jan. 22, which would wipe out the Huskies’ series with UMass Lowell that weekend. If the quarantine is just 10 days (like the women’s basketball team’s), Cavanaugh’s squad could get back on the ice on Jan. 18, which gives them four days of practice before Friday night vs. Lowell. If it can return in a modified quarantine after only a week (like men’s basketball did), UConn could be back on the ice by this Thursday.

  • At the very least, the Huskies will have Vladislav Firstov and Yan Kuznetsov back and rested while Kale Howarth should be fully healed from the upper-body injury suffered against Providence on Dec. 28.

  • It’s probably best not to dive too deep into the scheduling implications of the shutdown. Hockey East is changing things on the fly so UConn’s schedule at the end of the season will probably be vastly different than what’s listed now.

Links

The UConn Pod: Javonte Brown leaving, COVID craziness and men’s basketball’s big wins — We discussed UConn men’s hockey’s shutdown in the beginning of the podcast.

Social media headlines

Some new renderings are out about UConn’s new hockey arena.

A few thoughts on all this:

  • There isn’t a ton of new information compared to what we learned in September. The biggest things are the bar/lounge along the concourse, the actual layout of the facility, and new renderings.

  • The size is what it is. UConn is clearly set on ~2,700, though I can’t help feeling like having both a bar and an ice-level lounge is a waste of space. You could probably fit another 500 or so seats where the ice-level lounge is to get the capacity up to 3,200. Not ideal, but still better.

  • UConn also doesn’t seem to have much room to expand. It’s one thing to built the arena with a small capacity initially. It’s another to lock yourself into that number. But I’m also not an engineer, so maybe I’m wrong and it’ll be designed with future expansion in mind, just like Rentschler Field.

  • However, if the rink is going to be small, it better be really, really nice. The renderings look good but it’s no sure thing that the finished product will match up to expectations.

  • The student section is confusing. There’s a “student deck” which on one rendering appears to be a flat surface behind the bleachers on the end opposite the ice-level lounge, which doesn’t appear very conducive to watching hockey. I’d imagine the seats in front will also be reserved for students, so the entire capacity of the student section might be closer to 800 in the end.

  • Former UConn women’s hockey goaltender Annie Bélanger had some interesting thoughts on Twitter.

  • The most bizarre part of this entire project? UConn and Hockey East still haven’t formally announced it. Maybe I’m misremembering but there seemed to be much more fanfare for the “Athletics District” project for the new soccer, baseball, and softball stadiums.

  • Essentially, this new arena is a glorified practice rink. UConn can’t brand it as such because of the Hockey East requirements and the cost.

  • At the very least, there’s a sense in the men’s hockey program that after years of planning and speculation about various rink projects that never came to fruition, this is the one that will finally get done. And believe me, that feeling did not exist a year ago.

Scoreboard

Monday, Jan. 4

Men’s:UMass Lowell 9, Maine 5

Women’s:Northeastern 1, Maine 0

Wednesday, Jan. 6

Men’s:UMass 4, New Hampshire 0

Friday, Jan. 8

Men’s:Vermont 5, Maine 4Providence 7, BU 3New Hampshire 4, Boston College 3 (OT)

Women’s:Vermont 3, UConn 2 (OT)Boston College 5, Merrimack 3Northeastern 3, New Hampshire 1

Saturday, Jan. 9

Men’s:Maine 4, Vermont 3BU 6, Providence 4Northeastern 3, Merrimack 2 (OT)

Women’s:Vermont 3, UConn 2 (OT)New Hampshire 2 (1), Northeastern 2 (0) OT/ShootoutProvidence 5, Holy Cross 2

Sunday, Jan. 10

Men’s:Northeastern 3, Merrimack 2Boston College 3, New Hampshire 2 (OT)