OUTSTANDING IN HIS FIELD
Give it up for Chris Mackenzie, Dad-joking mastermind behind Uconn’s rise
Holy Cross chipped a goal off Uconn’s lead, not a big deal unless it’s a win-or-else kind of game.
“We’d have liked to get out of the second period 3-0,” said Chris Mackenzie, in his 11th season as Uconn women’s hockey coach. “But they made it 3-1 and that’s part of the reason I used to have hair. I coach, and now I don’t. Now, you know why and if you want to get into coaching, you’re going to look like me and I don’t advise anyone to do that.”
Maybe the game got a little hairy, but the Huskies won 4-2 Saturday and advanced to the Hockey East semifinals, to face Boston College Wednesday night right back at Toscano Family Ice Forum. And with Mackenzie, who likes to keep his team relaxed with “Dad jokes,” funny things can happen on the way to the forum, or on the bench, just not on the ice.
“There are some side jokes we have as a team, we just try to have fun with it,” Mackenzie said. “We’ve been pretty consistent this year, and, yeah, this is a great team to be around.”
The Huskies (23-7-5) are regular-season conference champs for the first time, but are now in survival mode. They are 10th in the Pairwise ratings, one behind Quinnipiac, but that might not be good enough to make the NCAA Tournament as an at-large selection. With 44 programs in Division I, only 11 tournament spots, automatic bids — and several of the top teams bunched in the Western College Hockey Association — Hockey East, despite its strong brands, is likely a one-bid league. So the Uconn women skates for their season Wednesday night and, with a win, again in the conference final on Saturday.
So tip your waiters and bartenders, and tip your cap to Mackenzie, 49, who, with associate head coach Casey Handrahan and assistant Elizabeth Wulf, has put Uconn in a good place.
“The coaches have installed so much confidence,” said Jada Habisch, the leading scorer. “They believe in each and every one of us, know our game and how to improve us. From when I stepped in as a freshman they have made my game so much better.”
Mackenzie, from Niagara Falls, Ontario, played at Niagara, where he was captain all four years,
“The coaches have installed so much confidence. They believe in each and every one of us, know our game and how to improve us. From when I stepped in as a freshman they have made my game so much better.”
— Jada Habisch, Uconn’s leading scorer
leaving the scoring records behind, then was an assistant in men's hockey at Umass-lowell for eight seasons. When his alma mater was looking for a women's hockey head coach, he saw a chance for stability, but after two years Niagara cut the program. After a year as a women's hockey assistant at Ohio State, he applied for the open position at Uconn and landed it in 2013.
“It felt right,” Mackenzie said. I wasn't 100 percent sure when I came for the interview, but when I left, I said, ‘This place is pretty impressive.' My wife (Allison) is from Connecticut, and we had two kids at this point, one on the way, and I took the job at Uconn, we took the job at Uconn, I remember telling her, ‘We're not moving any more, this is it. We're going to make this work here.'”
Uconn had won only seven games the previous two seasons when Mackenzie set about making it work. The Huskies were 9-24-2 in his first season, 2013-14, and have gotten gradually better since.
“We had some great players on those early teams,” Mackenzie said. “It just took a few years to change the mindset. The culture was always there, the team got along and worked well together, it was always kind of there, we just didn't mess it up to brutally honest. Our job is to bring in great players. It wasn't a quick fix. What some of them said was that it was fun coming to the rink, and it wasn't really fun the few years before that. The results have something to do with that, but the environment wasn't really as much fun, which we really tried to make sure they were really looking forward to coming to the rink.”
Mackenzie ventures into the hotbeds of hockey to pluck players to fit his mold. The current roster has 17 players from Canada. Habisch
(16 goals, 11 assists) came from Minnesota, heart of the WCHA. Goalie Tia Chan, from Hamilton, Ontario, played for China in the last Olympics, and has spent two years playing for the Chinese national team, and with Megan Warrener and Shannon Moran have held opponents to 1.3 goals per game.
Coryn Tormala (24 points), Brooke Campbell and Riley Grimley
(18 points each), Kathryn Stockdale (17) and Ashley Allard (16) are other top goal-producers.
“Consistent people that show up, that's kind of what you need,” Mac Kenzie said. “We've got a bunch of 'em. Our captain, (defenseman) Ainsley Svetek, Coryn Tormala, they're overachievers. They do well with school, put a lot of pressure on themselves because they care so much, they're maximizing their potential and that's what you want out of all your players.”
In 2021, when the Huskies were off to a good start, Mackenzie offered to get a spray tan if they made it to 10-0.
(He couldn't offer to, you know, shave his head). He was spared the indignation when the winning streak stopped at nine, but Uconn did win 24 games and reach the Hockey East final for the third time in five years.
What the Huskies have not done is play in the NCAA Tournament, despite several appearances on its doorstep. This season, they surpassed the league's traditional powers to earn the chance to host the league tournament, and are well positioned to make history.
And if the coach likes a good, corny joke, or self-effacing humor, he runs a tight ship for sailing in such seas. Each and every player on the roster carries a 3.0 GPA from the fall semester, so there's no reason to tear his hair out over anything but the tense, meaningful games the Huskies are playing.
“My kind of player? Somebody who off the ice takes care of their business,” Mackenzie said. “Like school, being a good citizen, organized, good time management, so they come to the rink free of any issues outside of the rink and are able to focus on their game. People that put in the extra work, are willing to prepare for an opponent, hard-working and competitive. I don't do very well if I'm worried about crazy stuff, write-ups, social misconduct, academic issues, I don't have a lot of patience for that, because it's a great opportunity.”