By Danny Barletta, From the Daily Campus:
March 5, 2021
When fans of college hockey look back on the 2019-20 UConn hockey team in 10 years, they probably won’t remember much about them. But make no mistake, this team will have its fingerprints on whatever success the program has in the future.
Find out what's happening in Mansfield-Storrsfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
This is the season that the standard of UConn hockey changed. They are no longer to be the bottom dwellers of the Hockey East and the punching bags for the big guns like Boston College, Boston University and Northeastern. Instead, they will be competing for conference championships.
Unfortunately, the Huskies were never able to cement their legacy with a deep run in the conference tournament — which many people including myself believe they could have done — due to the tournament being canceled because of the coronavirus. However, those who followed this team closely know how special they really were.
Find out what's happening in Mansfield-Storrsfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
The team was picked to finish ninth in Hockey East in the preseason coaches poll and miss the playoffs for the second year in a row, so right away, this team had a chip on its shoulder. But at the start of the year, they looked to be proving the critics correct rather than wrong.
Through the first eight games, UConn was just 2-5-1 and was coming off an absolute beatdown by BC, where they were outscored 11-1 in two games. Both coach Mike Cavanaugh and the players knew something had to change after that weekend, and something definitely did.
The next weekend, they had a great series against No. 12 UMass Lowell with a win and a tie, and over the course of the rest of the first half, they lost just one more game. UConn went into Christmas break on a four-game winning streak after sweeping Miami (Ohio) and Vermont.
The Daily Campus is the student-run newspaper of the University of Connecticut. Read more of their stories at DailyCampus.com.