State of the program: Toscano opens, new assistants, NIL
Head coach Mike Cavanaugh on the key off-the-ice developments in the program.
Mike Cavanaugh is happy to have been wrong.
When plans finally started to come together for what would eventually become Toscano Family Ice Forum, he had plenty of input on various aspects of the rink. Cavanaugh pushed for the club-level lounge, an idea borrowed from Notre Dame’s arena. He wanted a fireplace to honor the old outdoor rink and warming hut at UConn and got one in both the team and club lounges.
He didn’t get all he asked for, though. In Cavanaugh’s mind, the coaches offices would also be at the club level overlooking the ice. That proved to be too difficult to build, so they ended up below the concourse on the ground level, just up the hallway from the locker rooms.
Now, four months into the new facility, Cavanaugh has grown to love the location.
“I actually like them down here. I like the proximity to the locker room and the weight room,” he said. “I think it would probably be annoying if we were up there and I was like, ‘Oh, I gotta go down to the locker room’ or something. So I do enjoy having our offices down here.”
Even though the team only moved in back in January, Cavanaugh has settled into life at Toscano. Now that he’s used to the new digs, it makes the occasional return to Freitas Ice Forum that much more jarring.
“Every now and then I'll walk through there though, cut through to go to a baseball game or something and it's just like, ‘Wow, we were here for 10 years,’” Cavanaugh said.
The upgrades provided to the program by Toscano Family Ice Forum have been well-covered, but an underrated feature of the new facility? Year-round ice. At Freitas, the ice maker couldn’t keep up once the weather warmed up, so the sheet needed to be drained and re-made every offseason.
Now, UConn can use the ice during summer workouts.
“This year, they have to take [the ice] out to fix a couple things. It'll be back in July when the kids come back,” Cavanaugh said. “Going forward, we're not going to have to take the ice out.”
Will UConn have a third assistant?
In Toscano, there are six coaches’ offices and two conference rooms split between the men’s and women’s programs. Unlike Freitas Ice Forum, where both assistants as well as any additional staffers — i.e the director of hockey operations, graduate assistants, video coordinators, etc. — all shared one office, the assistants each have their own workspace.
For now at least.