Stout defense carried UConn women's hockey to a strong first half
The Huskies were expected to take a step back after losing a large class of seniors, but they head into the winter break ranked No. 15 in the nation.
UConn women’s hockey wrapped up the first half of its season with a 1-0 win at New Hampshire to take a 12-8-2 record into a month-long break. The Huskies are currently the No. 15 team in the nation and have been in the polls for most of the campaign.
Their success has largely been unexpected, though. After reaching the Hockey East championship game last season and just missing out on the NCAA Tournament, UConn lost nine players to graduation, including its top six scorers who were responsible for 64.6 percent of the team’s goals (64 of 99) and 64.0 percent of the team’s points (162 of 253).
Just one returner — Jada Habsich — had double-digit goals while only two — Habisch and Claire Peterson — reached the 10-point mark.
Despite such heavy losses, the Huskies have carried on thanks to a stout defense. They’ve allowed just 1.77 goals per game — eighth-best in the country — and have notched five shutouts on the season. UConn is also one of the most disciplined squads, committing the second-fewest penalties per game in the nation at 4.3 and owning the third-best penalty-kill percentage at .911.
In goal, Tia Chan returned after leaving the team last season to play for China in the 2022 Beijing Olympics. She has a 1.65 goals against average and .935 save percentage, which ranks 11th and 12th in the country, respectively.
If the defense was not elite, the Huskies would struggle to win games because they can’t put the puck in the back of the net. They managed 1.86 goals per game so far, which is somehow only 28th out of 42 Division I teams. UConn has scored three goals just seven times in 22 contests — and is undefeated in those games.
Coryn Tormala has a team-best 13 points on five goals and eight assists while Habsich and Peterson are both in double-figures as well with 12 points (seven goals, five assists) and 10 points (five goals, five assists), respectively. Brooke Campbell has five goals to pair with three assists as well.
As good as the Huskies have been, the offensive issues have capped their potential. They opened the season with four straight wins against RIT and Stonehill but were then swept by Northeastern by a combined score of 7-1. When UConn traveled up to Vermont, it tied 1-1 on Friday night but lost 6-1 on Saturday.
The Huskies did impress with back-to-back sweeps against Boston College and Providence but followed that up with two straight losses to Boston University where they out-shot the Terriers 66-42 in the series but were out-scored 7-3.
UConn closed out the first semester with a loss to Quinnipiac in the Nutmeg Cup final and a split with UNH.
With 22 games already under its belt, UConn’s second-half schedule is bizarre. Not only do the Huskies only have 12 games over the next two months, they return on Dec. 31 to play at Brown, but then don’t play again until Jan. 13 — which will be the first game in Toscano Family Ice Forum. They play just one series — the last weekend of the year against Holy Cross.
The schedule does favor UConn, though. While the Huskies are currently tied for fourth in the league with Boston College and Maine at 24 points, only three of their remaining 11 league games are against teams above them and they also have a three-game series with hapless Holy Cross, which is 1-14-0 in Hockey East this season.
UConn will have plenty of opportunities to rack up points down the stretch. Even though first place is already out of reach — Northeastern has a ridiculous 44 points in 17 games — the Huskies can still earn a high seed.
At the moment, UConn sits 19th in Pairwise, which means it’ll almost certainly need to win the Hockey East Playoffs to reach the 11-team NCAA Tournament for the first time in school history. The Huskies have the defense to be an elite team but to really contend in the postseason, they need to kick-start the offense in the second half.