The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
UConn has a lot to gain and a lot to give to Connecticut Ice
UConn hockey coach Mike Cavanaugh didn’t agree with my assessment. And that’s not a bad thing.
For if SNY Connecticut Ice is to be more than a two-year experiment, if it is to be a vital part of the state’s collegiate hockey scene for an ice age, all four schools involved must believe in it, pledge to it, nurture it, remain convinced that this weekend’s inaugural state tournament is a seed that will flower each winter for them.
This is what I told Cavanaugh: UConn has the most to gain from Connecticut Ice.
“I’m not sure I agree with you,” said Cavanaugh, whose Huskies play in the tournament’s opener against Quinnipiac at 4 p.m. Saturday at Webster Bank Arena. “I think everyone has something to gain. I’ve heard somebody say, ‘What does Yale have to gain by this?’ What do you mean what do they have to gain by it?
“You think Harvard doesn’t gain anything by being in the Beanpot? You don’t think Harvard doesn’t keep some Boston kids at home because they want to play for Harvard in the Beanpot? I think we all have something to gain by it.”
Cavanaugh was rolling his lines now, and I wasn’t about to whistle for a stoppage.
“Look, we’re not keeping the best players from Connecticut in Connecticut,” Cavanaugh said. “We’re not. I’m talking about all four schools combined. We’re not doing it. This is a vehicle that for sure is going to help in that area. You can’t tell me that a kid that is a mite, coming to these games and watching them and then as he’s 7, 8, 9, 10, grows up, doesn’t say, ‘Hey, I want to play in this tournament.’ I just think we all have a lot to gain by it as long as we stay committed to it.
“Just like anything, when someone becomes selfserving, what is it going to get for me? Then nothing ever works. The one thing about the Beanpot, nobody ever says, ‘What’s best for me?’ They say this is a great tournament. This is great for college hockey in the city of Boston. This has to be, ‘This is great for college hockey in the state of Connecticut.’ ”
Although Cavanaugh wasn’t the first to come up with the idea of a state col
lege hockey tournament, the man has been calling for it since his 2013 introductory press conference in Storrs. Non-stop.
And now it’s here. More than 5,000 tickets have been sold so far. Pretty solid. If the rest of the week’s sales and the walkup is good, there should be lively crowds.
The three-day event starting Friday will feature youth games, high school and prep school rivalry games at Webster Bank, on-ice and off-ice seminars for players and their families in conjunction with USA Hockey. All this stuff is good for Bridgeport’s present and terrific for hockey’s future players.
Yet for the event to be sustaining, maybe eventually move in alternating years to the XL Center in Hartford, the schools themselves must believe in its worth. And that belief is both a present and future thing. Yale plays Sacred Heart in the second game at 7 p.m. Saturday and the casual sports fans might go, well, that’s a W for Yale. Well, maybe you’d be wrong. Sacred Heart is ranked 35th in the men’s Division I PairWise rankings, while Yale is 40th. In the latest Top 20 USCHO poll, the Pioneers have the 28th most votes.
Quinnipiac, 15th in the PairWise and 17th in the USCHO hockey poll, would have to be considered a slight favorite to win the championship game Sunday night — if it gets there. UConn (36th in PairWise) won at No. 12-ranked Northeastern in its last game. These should be tightly played games. A hot goalie, a bad penalty leading to a decisive power-play goal, hockey outcomes are unpredictable.
A dramatic third period or overtime hero, of course, is what the tournament really needs in its first year. A thrilled kid, perhaps from Connecticut, who’ll yell and scream and talk into the cameras all night about his goal. And a little bad blood never hurts the drama,
either.
No, Connecticut Ice never figures to be as big as the Beanpot, certainly not in the formative years. But it can grow into something big and special in the Connecticut winter. It needs that chance.
“I want to see it become the premier showcase for hockey in the state every year,” Cavanaugh said. “I want to see a commitment from all four schools. Right now, it’s a two-year commitment. It should be a 10-year commitment. We’ve got to grow it. We’ve got to make it happen. The only way it happens is with rivalries forming and being committed to it year after year. That’s how it’s going to take on a life of its own.
“At first I wasn’t keen on the weekend we’re having it. But this weekend between the AFC and NFC championships and the Super Bowl — if that’s the weekend every year we’re going to do it, it might not be a bad one. But, like I said, everyone has got to be committed so we know it’s this weekend every year.”
What I really should have said to Cavanaugh was this: UConn has the most to gain from Connecticut Ice and UConn also has the most to give.
UConn is in the Hockey East, the premier hockey conference. With new oncampus
facilities coming, with its overall sports brand, the more attention a building program can get the more upside it can have. The Huskies won at Yale last year. Back-to-back wins over Quinnipiac and Yale would look impressive on the collegiate hockey scene and in the state sports landscape.
Other Connecticut schools undoubtedly have grown tired of UConn gaining the lion’s share of athletic attention over the past quarter century. Understood. Still if this tournament is to take off, if it was to play games XL Center where it could gain state support in use of the building in terms of rent, exhibition space for clinics and seminars, etc., the state flagship university is the one with the built-in relationship with the CRDA. Also, if this event is to jump significantly in attendance, general hockey fans and general fans of the school will have to attend. UConn clearly has the most in that area.
Make no mistake. Yale and Quinnipiac have the established tradition and national success and staunch followings. They are power hockey programs. UConn has tried individual games at Bridgeport in recent years and they haven’t drawn well.
Because of a scheduling conflict at the XL Center, the game against Maine on Jan. 15 was played at Webster Bank Arena. An attendance of 559 was announced. The Huskies are averaging 3,093 in 12 games at XL Center.
“The games just haven’t drawn at Bridgeport since I’ve been at UConn,” Cavanaugh said.
With Yale, Quinnipiac and Sacred Heart, that can change Saturday and Sunday.
Let’s hope Quinnipiac and especially Yale gets a charge out of the weekend. With Ivy League restrictions to 29 regular season games (other ECAC teams play 34), Yale chooses its non-conference games carefully and didn’t exactly rush to the table in the past for a state tournament. With two league games against Quinnipiac already, the school might initially not see a lot of bang for its buck in a third game.
In the same position as Yale, Harvard, it should be noted, schedules BC and BU for non-conference games each year and still plays them in the Beanpot.
“Having been involved (as a BC assistant), selfishly one the best parts of the Beanpot was it was a great dress rehearsal for what was to come,” Cavanaugh said. “You’re playing in such a hyped and high-pressure tournament, 16,000 at the Garden, every news station is there, everybody is watching it. There were years we lost, it was because we got paralyzed in the moment and you can learn from it heading into the conference tournament. Conversely, it also can catapult you to great things.”
Cavanaugh pointed out every time a Boston school won a national championship since the inception of the Beanpot it also won the tournament, too. It has happened 10 times.
If the patience is there, if the games are intense and the atmosphere matches that intensity, maybe we’ll have something special every winter. It’s worth the commitment.