By Dan­ny Bar­let­ta
The Dai­ly Cam­pus
Jan­u­ary 27, 2020

There was def­i­nite­ly a spe­cial buzz inside Web­ster Bank Are­na for the first day of the inau­gur­al Con­necti­cut Ice tour­na­ment on Sat­ur­day. The stands were pret­ty full for both games, and the media room was even fuller. 

“Look at this room right here,” UConn head coach Mike Cavanaugh said after the game. “We haven’t had a room in Con­necti­cut packed with media like this in a long time.” 

It was a dif­fer­ent atmos­phere for sure, and it didn’t have as much to do with the games them­selves as it did the over­all event. Quin­nip­i­ac beat UConn 3–2 in the first game and Sacred Heart clob­bered Yale 6–2 in the sec­ond. But more impor­tant­ly, per­haps a new col­lege hock­ey tra­di­tion was born. 

Coach­es from the schools were very pleased with the turnout, and they expressed a desire for the tour­na­ment to con­tin­ue for many years. 

“I hope it’s infi­nite,” Quin­nip­i­ac head coach Rand Pec­knold said. “I think we should run this tour­na­ment every year for the next 30, 40, 50 years … I think it’s great for the state.” 

“This is some­thing that needs to hap­pen every year,” Cavanaugh added. “I’m real­ly thank­ful that SNY was able to get this off the ground, and I want to make sure we con­tin­ue to grow it and grow it.” 

In addi­tion to the col­lege tour­na­ment, the week­end also pro­vid­ed youth hock­ey play­ers in Con­necti­cut an oppor­tu­ni­ty to par­tic­i­pate in games and clin­ics. There were high school hock­ey games played on Fri­day as well. Pec­knold said he thinks this event could real­ly help to keep young hock­ey play­ers in the sport. 

“The biggest thing we bat­tle in USA hock­ey right now is keep­ing the best ath­letes,” Pec­knold said. “They have so many options. They can play oth­er sports. If they’re not hap­py with hock­ey, they’ll go play lacrosse or golf or what­ev­er. So what­ev­er we can do to make kids have a great expe­ri­ence with hock­ey and keep them play­ing hock­ey is good for our sport.” 

Quin­nip­i­ac cap­tain Nick Jer­main, who is from Nor­walk, Con­necti­cut, said he wished they held this event when he was play­ing youth hockey. 

“I wish this was around when I was a lit­tle guy,” Jer­main said. “I see all the lit­tle kids run­ning around in track­suits rep­re­sent­ing their teams. This would’ve been awe­some to come to as a young kid, but I’m real­ly hap­py to be a part of the first one … I can only see it get­ting big­ger and bet­ter from here, and it’s just great for hock­ey and great for hock­ey in Connecticut.” 

The turnout for both games was impres­sive. It wasn’t a sell­out, but there were many more occu­pied seats than emp­ty ones. For a lot of the play­ers, includ­ing Sacred Heart senior Jason Cot­ton, this was one of the biggest crowds they had ever played in front of. 

“I’ve been here four years and that was the most fans I think I’ve ever seen at our game for home,” Cot­ton said. “It was a great turnout.” 

Sacred Heart head coach C.J. Marot­to­lo said that Sat­ur­day was just the begin­ning of some­thing real­ly special. 

“I think you saw a pret­ty good glimpse of it tonight and this is only day one,” Marot­to­lo said. “I think this fes­ti­val has so much more to grow. With the way the event was run tonight and the games, I think the sky’s the lim­it for this event.” 

The gold stan­dard for col­lege hock­ey reg­u­lar sea­son tour­na­ments is the Bean­pot, played annu­al­ly since 1952 between Boston’s four most sto­ried col­lege hock­ey teams (Boston Col­lege, Boston Uni­ver­si­ty, North­east­ern and Har­vard). Cavanaugh, who was an assis­tant coach at BC pri­or to com­ing to UConn, spoke pre­vi­ous­ly about how he feels Con­necti­cut Ice can emu­late that. 

“It’s some­thing that’s not going to be a flash in the pan,” Cavanaugh said at the begin­ning of the sea­son. “I hope it’s some­thing that’s here to stay because I know how spe­cial that Bean­pot is to the Boston area and there’s no rea­son why [Con­necti­cut Ice] can’t devel­op into some­thing very sim­i­lar here in Connecticut.” 

Being from Greater Boston, I grew up watch­ing the Bean­pot, and I’ve seen its impact on col­lege hock­ey in my area. It’s some­thing that every hock­ey fan, young and old, looks for­ward to watch­ing every year. To the peo­ple from that area, the Bean­pot means more than the Frozen Four because of the local significance. 

The Bean­pot doesn’t mean a lot in terms of stand­ings and play­off posi­tion­ing, but it means so much to play­ers, coach­es and fans because of the brag­ging rights and the idea that “We own col­lege hock­ey in Boston.” 

In this case, it would be, “We own col­lege hock­ey in Con­necti­cut,” a laud­able achieve­ment in a state with four pro­grams of nation­al recognition. 

“I have no doubt that the state of Con­necti­cut will ulti­mate­ly real­ly grav­i­tate towards this event and make it some­thing that we can be real­ly, real­ly proud of as a state,” Marot­to­lo said. 

Obvi­ous­ly, it will take some time for Con­necti­cut Ice to get to that lev­el, but it has all the pieces it needs to become a Bean­pot-like tra­di­tion: Qual­i­ty hock­ey pro­grams, region­al sig­nif­i­cance and, most impor­tant­ly, a pas­sion­ate fan­base. To get the type of crowd we saw in Bridge­port on the first day of the inau­gur­al tour­na­ment shows that peo­ple in Con­necti­cut have a real inter­est in this event. 

If han­dled cor­rect­ly, Con­necti­cut Ice could become col­lege hockey’s next great tournament. 

“For years to come, we’re all going to have com­pet­i­tive teams,” Cavanaugh said. “If we con­tin­ue to grow it and grow it, it’s only going to be great for the state of Con­necti­cut and all the hock­ey fan­base here.”