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STORRS — Mike Cavanaugh collapsed on his couch Saturday, exhausted by the run of games to the Hockey East final, catching his breath the day before the NCAA revealed its 16-team field.
He got a text message from his old boss, Jerry York.
“He said, ‘Stay with your workouts, you’ve got to keep your energy up,'” Cavanaugh said. “So I went out for a run Sunday. I understand now that it’s different as a head coach than as an assistant.:
Cavanaugh, 56, was on York’s staff at Boston College for 18 years, helping to win four NCAA Tournaments. When he arrived at UConn on May 8, 2013, he was surrounded by entrenched national powers, and had to slam away at the boards until his program broke into that group. Four weeks earlier, Yale and Quinnipiac both reached the Frozen Four, Yale winning the 2013 national championship. Cavanaugh hoped for a fast start in UConn’s last season in the second-tier Atlantic Conference. The Huskies had a winning season, but lost in the semifinals.
A neighbor’s backyard rink helped this UConn star get to the NHL. Now, he’s making the most of it.
In his second season, they joined Hockey East, then and now, more than ever, a blueblood-filled conference. It has been a long, slow process to rise among schools like his former residence. Boston College is still No.1 in “cawledge hawkey,” as the Beanpotters say, at the moment.
But once Cavanaugh finished his run last weekend, his energy restored, he learned UConn was to make it’s debut in the NCAA Tournament. The Huskies, ranked sixth in the Pairwise Ratings, bussed to Allentown, Pa., to play Quinnipiac in the first round on Friday at the PPL Center at 5 p.m. The winner will play either No. 1 seed Maine or No. 4 seed Penn State on Sunday for a spot in the Frozen Four in St. Louis.
For a program that was playing in Division III, in an open-air rink until 1998, it’s been a steady ascent. Cavanaugh didn’t come for a quick fix; he wanted to build something that would last, like the program he came from.
“I just know it takes time to build the type of program I wanted to build,” Cavanaugh said. “We’ve had now three 20-win seasons in four years – that’s the type of program I wanted to build. Consistency. Twenty wins for a college hockey season is a pretty good season. Getting to the national tournament is a pretty good season, this year we got over the hump for that. I want a program that’s going to continually win.”
John Spetz pushes the winning habits that changed UConn’s trajectory in Hockey East
The nature of hockey, the serendipitous bounces of the puck, can make this tournament of 16 elite teams a crap shoot. Any of the teams can win, if its goaltender is hot and if the puck caroms out to the right stick at the right time. You may have to try again and again to get that right bounce, which is why being a consistent contender is so important. Quinnipiac lost the final in 2013 and ’16, but broke through with a series of thrilling wins to take it all in 2023.
The Huskies had lost eight in a row to the Bobcats during that time, but finally beat them, on Ryan Tattle’s goal with half a second remaining, in the semifinals of the CT Ice tournament this season. If seeing the battle-tested Bobcats pop up on the screen as a first-round opponent was disconcerting, Cavanaugh has been careful not to show it.
“Hey, I’ll play anybody,” he said. “This is new territory for us. It’s survive and advance. I don’t think Quinnipiac is thinking ‘This is going to be for the championship of Connecticut.’ We’re all trying to win a national championship.”
At UConn there is always the added pressure or motivation, depending on the prevailing winds, for a coach to add his sport to the winning that goes on. There are the UConn men’s and women’s basketball programs piling up 17 championships since 1995. The baseball team, despite the odds stacked against it, has ventured deep into the NCAA Tournament several times, and both the field hockey and men’s soccer teams have banners to show for their history.
“It’s funny,” Cavanaugh said. “When I got here, it used to make me laugh when people would say, ‘Once you establish your culture, your program will take off.’ I said, ‘It’s not my culture. UConn has the culture, I’ve just got to get my players to adhere to it. It would be a disservice to people like (field hockey coach) Nancy Stevens, Jim Calhoun, Geno Auriemma, Dee Rowe and all those people who came to UConn before me and built that culture. It was established. I just had to get my players to buy in and adhere to it.”
UConn’s first full season in the Toscano Family Ice Forum was a dip below .500. When several players went into the transfer portal, including Matthew Wood, a first-round NHL draft pick, there was consternation. But Hudson Schandor and John Spetz committed to coming back for a fifth year and resolved to get that adherence to a UConn buy-in. This year’s team is not long on draft picks, something for which some rosters are judged, but plays better together, even with as many as eight freshmen taking regular shifts. The Huskies were 8-2 out of the conference, 22-11-4 to position themselves for an at-large bid, one of six from Hockey East in the field.
“We got a collective group of players who are really talented,” Cavanaugh said. “Are they first-round draft picks? No. We’ve only got three or four draft picks on our team, but they’re really good college hockey players and they play together, and in this sport, one of the few sports where hard work can overcome talent, playing connected can overcome talent.”
This, by the way, is a formula that has served Quinnipiac well over the last decade-plus.
York, who retired in 2022, stays in touch with Cavanaugh, and Auriemma is a frequent golf partner, and presence at UConn hockey games. “Two coaches with over 1,000 wins,” Cavanaugh said. “So I’m pretty fortunate. It’s funny to see how different they are as people, but how similar their philosophies are.” From BC’s runs, Cavanaugh learned the importance of playing to his team’s strengths.
So Friday comes the moment a dozen years in the making. The Huskies were close enough to watch the Selection Show in 2021, but were left out. They were a goal away from winning Hockey East’s automatic bid in 2022, but lost the final to UMass. This year, they left little to chance in punching a ticket.
The men’s basketball team, working on back-to-back championships, was eliminated Sunday. The women are headed to the Sweet 16 for the 31st year in a row and “The Ice Bus,” as it’s known in the state, has at last rolled into the most predictable, and maybe the most exciting tournament in college sports, single-elimination hockey. UConn has seven wins against teams in this final 16.
“We can get knocked out in the first round, and we could win the thing,” Cavanaugh said. “That’s how good the college hockey tournament is.”
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He got a text message from his old boss, Jerry York.
“He said, ‘Stay with your workouts, you’ve got to keep your energy up,'” Cavanaugh said. “So I went out for a run Sunday. I understand now that it’s different as a head coach than as an assistant.:
Cavanaugh, 56, was on York’s staff at Boston College for 18 years, helping to win four NCAA Tournaments. When he arrived at UConn on May 8, 2013, he was surrounded by entrenched national powers, and had to slam away at the boards until his program broke into that group. Four weeks earlier, Yale and Quinnipiac both reached the Frozen Four, Yale winning the 2013 national championship. Cavanaugh hoped for a fast start in UConn’s last season in the second-tier Atlantic Conference. The Huskies had a winning season, but lost in the semifinals.
A neighbor’s backyard rink helped this UConn star get to the NHL. Now, he’s making the most of it.
In his second season, they joined Hockey East, then and now, more than ever, a blueblood-filled conference. It has been a long, slow process to rise among schools like his former residence. Boston College is still No.1 in “cawledge hawkey,” as the Beanpotters say, at the moment.
But once Cavanaugh finished his run last weekend, his energy restored, he learned UConn was to make it’s debut in the NCAA Tournament. The Huskies, ranked sixth in the Pairwise Ratings, bussed to Allentown, Pa., to play Quinnipiac in the first round on Friday at the PPL Center at 5 p.m. The winner will play either No. 1 seed Maine or No. 4 seed Penn State on Sunday for a spot in the Frozen Four in St. Louis.
For a program that was playing in Division III, in an open-air rink until 1998, it’s been a steady ascent. Cavanaugh didn’t come for a quick fix; he wanted to build something that would last, like the program he came from.
“I just know it takes time to build the type of program I wanted to build,” Cavanaugh said. “We’ve had now three 20-win seasons in four years – that’s the type of program I wanted to build. Consistency. Twenty wins for a college hockey season is a pretty good season. Getting to the national tournament is a pretty good season, this year we got over the hump for that. I want a program that’s going to continually win.”
John Spetz pushes the winning habits that changed UConn’s trajectory in Hockey East
The nature of hockey, the serendipitous bounces of the puck, can make this tournament of 16 elite teams a crap shoot. Any of the teams can win, if its goaltender is hot and if the puck caroms out to the right stick at the right time. You may have to try again and again to get that right bounce, which is why being a consistent contender is so important. Quinnipiac lost the final in 2013 and ’16, but broke through with a series of thrilling wins to take it all in 2023.
The Huskies had lost eight in a row to the Bobcats during that time, but finally beat them, on Ryan Tattle’s goal with half a second remaining, in the semifinals of the CT Ice tournament this season. If seeing the battle-tested Bobcats pop up on the screen as a first-round opponent was disconcerting, Cavanaugh has been careful not to show it.
“Hey, I’ll play anybody,” he said. “This is new territory for us. It’s survive and advance. I don’t think Quinnipiac is thinking ‘This is going to be for the championship of Connecticut.’ We’re all trying to win a national championship.”
At UConn there is always the added pressure or motivation, depending on the prevailing winds, for a coach to add his sport to the winning that goes on. There are the UConn men’s and women’s basketball programs piling up 17 championships since 1995. The baseball team, despite the odds stacked against it, has ventured deep into the NCAA Tournament several times, and both the field hockey and men’s soccer teams have banners to show for their history.
“It’s funny,” Cavanaugh said. “When I got here, it used to make me laugh when people would say, ‘Once you establish your culture, your program will take off.’ I said, ‘It’s not my culture. UConn has the culture, I’ve just got to get my players to adhere to it. It would be a disservice to people like (field hockey coach) Nancy Stevens, Jim Calhoun, Geno Auriemma, Dee Rowe and all those people who came to UConn before me and built that culture. It was established. I just had to get my players to buy in and adhere to it.”
UConn’s first full season in the Toscano Family Ice Forum was a dip below .500. When several players went into the transfer portal, including Matthew Wood, a first-round NHL draft pick, there was consternation. But Hudson Schandor and John Spetz committed to coming back for a fifth year and resolved to get that adherence to a UConn buy-in. This year’s team is not long on draft picks, something for which some rosters are judged, but plays better together, even with as many as eight freshmen taking regular shifts. The Huskies were 8-2 out of the conference, 22-11-4 to position themselves for an at-large bid, one of six from Hockey East in the field.
“We got a collective group of players who are really talented,” Cavanaugh said. “Are they first-round draft picks? No. We’ve only got three or four draft picks on our team, but they’re really good college hockey players and they play together, and in this sport, one of the few sports where hard work can overcome talent, playing connected can overcome talent.”
This, by the way, is a formula that has served Quinnipiac well over the last decade-plus.
York, who retired in 2022, stays in touch with Cavanaugh, and Auriemma is a frequent golf partner, and presence at UConn hockey games. “Two coaches with over 1,000 wins,” Cavanaugh said. “So I’m pretty fortunate. It’s funny to see how different they are as people, but how similar their philosophies are.” From BC’s runs, Cavanaugh learned the importance of playing to his team’s strengths.
So Friday comes the moment a dozen years in the making. The Huskies were close enough to watch the Selection Show in 2021, but were left out. They were a goal away from winning Hockey East’s automatic bid in 2022, but lost the final to UMass. This year, they left little to chance in punching a ticket.
The men’s basketball team, working on back-to-back championships, was eliminated Sunday. The women are headed to the Sweet 16 for the 31st year in a row and “The Ice Bus,” as it’s known in the state, has at last rolled into the most predictable, and maybe the most exciting tournament in college sports, single-elimination hockey. UConn has seven wins against teams in this final 16.
“We can get knocked out in the first round, and we could win the thing,” Cavanaugh said. “That’s how good the college hockey tournament is.”
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