Cavanaugh adjusts to new format
UConn men’s hockey coach Mike Cavanaugh has become numb to the ups and downs that COVID-19 has brought to the season. The cancellations, postponements and quarantines are no longer foreign. Hockey East’s newscheduling plan, which kicked the previously laid out schedule to the side in favor of week-by-week scheduling, will hopefully erase those problems.
It’s a change to the operating system, so to speak. Coaches and players are used to looking weeks down the road and knowing who they’d be playing and where they’d be. Nowthey’ll have just a few days notice.
But there’s no complaining for Cavanaugh. All he and the Huskies can do is be prepared. Andthe challenge ahead is their steepest yet: a home-and-home with No. 1 Boston College this weekend, marking the first time the program will square off with the nation’s top team.
Hockey East made the announcement on Tuesday that UConn (5-5-1) will travel to Boston College for the first game Friday at 4 p.m., and then host the Eagles at Freitas Ice Forum on Saturday at 4 p.m. The Huskies split a series with the Eagles (8-2) in December, though Boston College was without star goaltender Spencer Knight, a Darien native who played at Avon Old Farms, and a firstround pick of the Florida Panthers.
The first game can be heard on the UConn IMG Radio Network (ESPN 97.9 FM), while Saturday’s game will be broadcast on the Fox affiliate CW20.
“Someone said to me this week, ‘Oh you have to play Boston College again? You’ve already played them?’ ” Cavanaugh said. “It’s great. We get another chance to play Boston College. If we go in there saying, ‘Oh yeah, that’s terrible we have to play them. Why do we have to play them?’ We already played them,’ you don’t have a chance of winning the hockey game. You’ve already talked yourself out of it.
“There’s no sense getting upset about who Hockey East says we’re going to play.”
UConn paused team activities in the first week of January after a member of the program tested positive for COVID-19. Two games against Northeastern were canceled.
“We prepared ourselves for this type of season,” Cavanaugh said. “At times, it’s going to be frustrating, but you have to let go of it if you want to be successful.”
The Huskies have played their home games on campus at Freitas Ice Forum — their practice facility — as opposed to the XLCenter in Hartford.
“I haven’t done it since we were in my first year here and we were in the Atlantic League, obviously things were a little different,” Cavanaugh said. “It’s been fine. I feel like a rink’s a rink. Once you get into the game and they drop the puck, the rink’s the rink. It’s 200 [feet] by 85 [feet] just like the other rinks.”
Cavanaugh said the Huskies won’t dwell on things they can’t control. For now, the focus is on the top-ranked Eagles. Cavanaugh downplayed the notion of any “David and Goliath” story. That’s not how the Huskies, whoreceived votes in the most recent men’s hockey poll, are viewing the matchup.
Even still, if UConn is playing the underdog role here ...
“I hope it turns out the way it did for David and Goliath if that’s the case,” Cavanaugh said.