Dom Amore: UConn’s new hockey arena can be space for students, athletes to bond – and the Huskies’ overtime win was a perfect ice breaker
Hudson Schandor, who was raised to be resilient, didn’t let the disappearance of a two-goal lead spoil the party Thursday night. A few minutes later he flipped in the winning overtime goal to give UConn a 4-3 victory over Alaska-Anchorage.
The full house at the Toscano Family Ice Forum, 2,691, erupted as one would expect. But this was a little different.
This, to borrow the last line from Casablanca, could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
“I think it could be really special,” Schandor said. “These students are looking for something to go to and support and have fun, and with the growth of this program and this new beautiful rink we’re in, these students having our back is huge for us. I think we can play a little vice versa game with them, where we get some wins for them and they support us right back.”
The Toscano Family Ice Forum, which opened in mid-January, was meant to be an intimate setting for hockey and it has the amenities, fire pits and all, to draw donors and warm up winter nights. But college hockey, or cawledge hawkey, if you will, was meant to be this way, the way it played out Thursday night. Perhaps more than any other sport, hockey lends itself to student-dominated crowds, to being a campus happening.
So the Huskies’ third game in the new arena was designated a student-only affair. Once the free tickets were made available online, they were all claimed in 12 hours and there were not many empty seats. Except for a few big wigs, parents and 46 NHL scouts who came to eyeball UConn’s 18-year-old freshman phenom Matthew Wood, it was all students who walked across campus. Rarely is it so easy to find a parking space outside a sold-out arena.
“When [AD] David Benedict told me he had the idea for the all-student game, I really wasn’t sure what it was going to be like,” coach Mike Cavanaugh said. “It was amazing. I give a lot of credit to our student body. I hope we have another one because it was electric from the minute we dropped the puck.”
The UConn men (18-10-3) needed this win. After a promising start to the season, they have struggled, and two losses at New Hampshire last week likely means they will have to win the Hockey East Tournament to get to the NCAAs.
Alaska Anchorage came a long way for this nonconference game and proved a lot tougher than its 4-17 record; this was to be the Seawolves’ fourth consecutive overtime loss.
Since joining Hockey East, and the premier brand it represents, UConn has played most of its important home games at the XL Center, a pro hockey venue where crowds are often decent but not enough to fill 15,564 seats.
There are those who believe, with some justification, that this new, $70 million rink on campus should have been more than 2,600 in capacity, but it seemed right-sized on Thursday. The student section at a sold-out Gampel game is about 3,500 among 10,167. Here, students came, filled the building and got loud at all the right places, such as when Schandor, a junior from Vancouver, gave UConn a 1-0 lead in the first period.
“That first goal, I think the roof almost popped off this place,” Schandor said.
UConn led 2-0 and 3-1, as Tristan Fraser and Nick Capone scored, but Alaska Anchorage scored twice, tying the game with 6:56 left in regulation. William Gilson, from Greenwich, assisted on Alex Gomez’s tying score.
So assistant captain Schandor and the Huskies, who’d missed a lot of what Cavanaugh calls Grade A chances, had to get back to work.
“He’s by far the most positive kid on our team,” Cavanaugh said. “Upbeat. The minute they tied it up, he’s the one that says, ‘Hey, let’s get going, we’re fine, we’re going to find way to win this game.’ He believes it. And sure enough … “
UConn pressured over the final minutes but couldn’t score. Halfway through the five-minute overtime, Wood won a faceoff, and the puck moved from Andrew Lucas to Ryan Tverberg to Schandor, who got it past goalie Jared Whale at the 2:37 mark.
“A lot of that [optimism] actually came from my dad,” Schandor said. “A lot of dads can be hard on their kids, but after games, even during games, he would come up to me and put a lot of things in perspective. ‘Kids are being born without limbs. It’s a hockey game. Go out there and have fun, do your thing. Don’t be worried about one bad play, one bad game.’
“We get scored on with six minutes left, you look around, it seems like the world’s falling. It’s not. We’re fine, we’re a great hockey team, we’ve been resilient all year. We’re a team that can bounce back.”
The team surrounded Schandor at the glass behind the net, as the students behind and above them joined the long celebration, long enough for the entire recording of Brass Bonanza, yes, even the rarely heard bridge, to blare on.
“Listen, I would have liked to have won that in regulation,” Cavanaugh said. “But if you’re not going to win in regulation on a student-only night, to win in overtime it’s awesome.”
UConn has three games left, two in the new rink. New Hampshire comes in Saturday, another must-have if the Huskies are going to fight for a home game in the conference tournament. Boston College comes in March 4.
The Huskies showed their classmates a good time, sent them back to their dorms happy and excited. Good bet a lot of them will be back as a bond, something that isn’t the same with off-campus games, begins to build.
“It’s been huge having them behind us,” Schandor said. “We love playing in the XL Center, too. That was great, having the fans in Hartford, but there is nothing like being right at home with students.”
Dom Amore can be reached at damore@courant.com