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Weekly Roundup: UConn's offense falls flat against UNH

Weekly Roundup: UConn's offense falls flat against UNH

The Huskies have been struggling offensively, with just three goals in two games this past week.

January 04, 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

Expect some schedule news for UConn on Tuesday. The Huskies won’t play UMass for the fourth and fifth time and will instead face another program in the Northeast.

Weekend Thoughts

UConn’s loss to UNH on Saturday was definitely a step back for the team, but there’s no reason to hit the panic button. Sure, the offense is in a bad place right now but defensively, the Huskies haven’t allowed more than three goals in regulation to anybody except UMass — and both of those occasions came on the road.
Mike Cavanaugh says that defense needs to be like a dog — you can call on it when you need it — whereas offense is like a cat and doesn’t come when you call it. “Defense is going to win us trophies,” Cavanaugh told the locker room last year ahead of CT Ice. UConn’s defense is solid, now it just needs to work on finding the back of the net.
There are two major issues with UConn’s offense: Accuracy of shots and maintaining the zone. The Huskies threw 70 shots on net in the two games against UNH but how many of those really made Wildcats goaltender Mike Robinson work? That number’s probably in the single digits.
UConn also doesn’t possess the puck well. The Huskies struggle with zone entries and don’t hold the puck inside the blue line often. A lot of their shots are coming off a break as opposed to setting up and getting sustained time in their offensive zone.
The latter point is also a major issue with the team’s power play. Most of UConn’s time with an extra skater is spent skating the length of the ice to retrieve the puck.
UNH looked better than the eighth-best team in Hockey East, which is where the Wildcats were picked in the league’s preseason poll. Overall, there seems to be three pretty hierarchy in Hockey East this year. BC and UMass are in the top tier; Maine, Merrimack, and Vermont are at the bottom and everyone else is in the middle. We’ll see where BU fits in when it finally plays a game.
No, Ryan Tverberg wouldn’t have helped against UNH, for a lot of reasons. First, what message would it have sent to the team if a freshman came in, practiced twice, and then got put into the lineup over guys like Eric Linell, Gavin Puskar, or John Wojciechowski who have put in the work all season long? Tverberg needs to earn his spot, Cavanaugh isn’t going to play him on potential alone. There’s no way the freshman could’ve done that in just two practices.
Tverberg probably wasn’t in peak shape either after completing a mandatory quarantine. Also, who knows how long it’s been since he’s played in a game or even been on the ice. The BCHL, where Tverberg was supposed to play this year, hasn’t begun its season. He still probably needs to knock off a fair amount of rust — on top of integrating with the team and learning all the systems.
The offense is going to get better. UConn has good players and went through a similar drought last season at the start of the second half. In their first nine games after the winter break, the Huskies averaged 2.22 goals per game and didn’t score more than three in that stretch. That ended when they dropped 14 goals in two games against UNH.
Vladislav Firstov isn’t going to single-handedly fix UConn’s offensive woes when he gets back, but his presence could be the spark that the team is looking for.
As for a timeline for Firstov and Yan Kuznetsov’s return, Team Russia plays in the semifinals tonight (Jan. 4) and will either move on to the finals or third-place game tomorrow (Jan. 5). That means the pair will probably return to campus sometime this week or next. However, they’ll need to get tested and then quarantine until they get a negative result back.
After that, Cavanaugh said he’ll have to give both players a break since they’ve been playing every day for the last few months. That means we probably won’t see either of them back in the lineup until UConn’s series against UMass Lowell on Jan. 22 and 23 at the earliest.

Three Stars

Each week, we’ll highlight UConn’s top performers from the weekend.

First star: Tomas Vomacka

Vomacka had perhaps his best performance in a UConn uniform this weekend. He stopped 61 of the 64 shots he faced and two of the goals he let up were on a UNH power play.

In fact, of the 23 goals that Vomacka’s allowed this season, 10 have been on the power play while one was even strength in overtime. That means in 5-on-5 play, Vomacka has given up just 12 goals in nine games. His .923 save percentage is up to 20th in the nation and fourth in Hockey East.

If the Huskies can sort out their penalty kill, they could easily be one of the best defensive teams in the conference.

Second star: Adam Karashik

One of the more deceptive stats in hockey is +/-, which measures how many goals happen — one way or another — while a player is on the ice. Karashik is a prime example of that with a team-low -6. It doesn’t always tell the full story.

Karashik was arguably UConn’s best skater against UNH. He set the tone with big open-ice hits and put his body on the line to block shots as well. Cavanaugh often calls Karashik the heart and soul of the team and the senior showed why this weekend.

Third star: Hudson Schandor

Schandor won 13-18 face-offs — including a few critical draws in the final minutes — in UConn’s Friday night win. Though the freshman is only fourth on the Huskies with a .513 face-off win percentage, that still puts him at 20th in Hockey East. Schandor also played well defensively and blocked some shots, something that not all forwards are willing to do.

Scoreboard

Friday, Jan. 1

Men’s:Providence 0 (2), Vermont 0 (1) OTUMass 4, Northeastern 3

Women’s:Vermont 4, Holy Cross 0

Saturday, Jan. 2

Men’s:UMass 5, Northeastern 3Providence 3, Vermont 1

Women’s:Vermont 6, Holy Cross 1

Sunday, Jan. 3

Men’s:UMass Lowell 5, Maine 3

Women’s:Maine 3, Northeastern 0

Note: UConn women’s hockey didn’t play this weekend. The Huskies voted to return home for Christmas and didn’t have enough time to practice before their scheduled games against Northeastern.