By Dan­ny Barletta
The Dai­ly Campus
Octo­ber 4, 2019

The UConn men’s hock­ey team start their sea­son this week­end with a matchup against Sacred Heart. They are hop­ing to have a bounce-back sea­son after strug­gling a bit last year. Pho­to by Eric Wang / The Dai­ly Campus.

The Ice Bus is get­ting fueled up and is almost ready to leave the sta­tion. The UConn men’s hock­ey sea­son gets under­way this Sat­ur­day when they trav­el to Bridge­port to take on Sacred Heart. Puck drop is set for 7 p.m.

This looks to be a bounce-back sea­son for the Huskies, who fin­ished ninth in Hock­ey East last year with a 12–20‑2 record. How­ev­er, they did fin­ish on a high note win­ning their last two games includ­ing an upset of the No. 2 team in the coun­try, UMass. Senior cap­tain Ben­jamin Free­man said that end­ing helped gain some momen­tum head­ing into this season.

“We know what our poten­tial real­ly was,” Free­man said. “So I think we just put in that extra work this sum­mer so we can solid­i­fy our poten­tial and make sure we’re work­ing hard.”

This is still a real­ly young team with 18 of the 26 play­ers on the ros­ter still under­class­men. How­ev­er, the fresh­men last year made up the bulk of the team, and now those play­ers are a year old­er and more experienced.

“I think the biggest jump guys make is from their fresh­man to sopho­more year,” head coach Mike Cavanaugh said last week. “It’s so hard when you have that fresh­man year. Everything’s so new … But now when you come back, you feel so much more comfortable.”

Sopho­mores expect­ed to have a huge impact for the Huskies this year include stand­out for­wards Rus­lan Iskhav­oc and Jon­ny Evans and goalie Tomas Vomacka. 

Vomac­ka, who burst onto the scene in the sec­ond half of last sea­son and played ter­rif­ic, has the poten­tial to be one of the top goalies in the con­fer­ence. Cavanaugh seemed real­ly impressed with his off­sea­son improve­ments, say­ing that Vomac­ka increased his ver­ti­cal jump by 12 inch­es which has helped his explo­sive­ness in net.

“It’s good to see some results,” Vomac­ka said. “I’ve been work­ing hard last sum­mer, this sum­mer, so it’s good to see some improvement.”

Even though there isn’t many upper­class­men on the team, the ones they do have will be key for this team. The lead­er­ship group of cap­tains Free­man and Wyatt New­pow­er and alter­nate cap­tains Alexan­der Payusov and Adam Karashik will have a huge role this season.

“I know they’re going to do a com­mend­able job lead­ing this team this year,” Cavanaugh said.

Sacred Heart is com­ing off a sea­son in which it went 16–17‑4 and lost in the Atlantic Hock­ey quar­ter­fi­nals to RIT. The Pio­neers have had the Huskies’ num­ber for a while now, as they have won the last six matchups dat­ing back to 2014. UConn will look to final­ly break the “Curse of Sacred Heart” this Sat­ur­day. The two teams may meet again lat­er this sea­son dur­ing the first-ever Con­necti­cut Ice Fes­ti­val in January.

The Huskies were picked in the pre­sea­son coach­es’ poll to fin­ish ninth in Hock­ey East and miss out on the tour­na­ment again. New­pow­er said that poll means nothing.

“It is what it is,” New­pow­er said. “It’s a pre­sea­son poll. It doesn’t dic­tate where we’re going to fin­ish at the end of the year, and quite frankly, it’s not all that impor­tant to us because at the end of the day, it’s how we’re going to step on the ice and play.”\

The road to prov­ing those coach­es wrong starts Saturday.