A period-and-a-half into the men's hockey team's game against Holy Cross Friday night, it appeared as though the team was riding the momentum from its 3-1 win over American International earlier in the week. The Huskies jumped out to a quick 3-0 lead and junior Beau Erickson was stopping everything in goal.
Four-and-a-half periods and nine unanswered goals later, however, the Huskies would leave the weekend with their 19th and 20th losses of the season.
UConn (6-20-1, 5-13-1 Atlantic Hockey) started out strong Friday night against the Crusaders, scoring less than two minutes into the game. Chris Ochoa sent the puck toward Holy Cross goalie Adam Roy and it slowly trickled through Roy's legs, giving the Huskies a 1-0 lead. Jordan Behler moved the lead to 2-0 with his first goal of the season in the last three minutes of the first period.
Despite the lead, Holy Cross (10-11-5, 9-8-3) out-shot UConn in the first period 14 to 9, a sign of things to come.
Although Corey Jendras' goal early in the second period would give the Huskies a 3-0 lead, a series of penalties and bad luck would allow the Crusaders to rattle off three unanswered goals to tie the score.
Four Husky penalties resulted in four power plays for Holy Cross in the second period alone, something that has plagued the Huskies all season said coach Bruce Marshall.
"We took some penalties and we got a little rattled," Marshall said. "I don't think we weathered the storm and I don't think we battled through it as hard as we had to. We had some great chances to score in the third but they just didn't go in."
Holy Cross added two goals in the third period to make the final 5-3 and leave Marshall at a loss for words.
"If we keep getting pucks to the net hopefully some will go in for us," Marshall said. "You figure three will be enough but not tonight."
The way the final two periods played out Friday night carried over into to Saturday nights game.
The first period belonged to Holy Cross, who peppered Erickson with 14 shots, scoring on three of them, two by Jordan Cyr, making it eight unanswered goals and 3-0 Holy Cross.
While the Crusaders unleashed a barrage of pucks on Erickson, the Huskies could only muster one shot on goal in the first period resulting in an easy save by Ian Damns. It was turnovers that doomed UConn in the first period, and put them in an early hole.
"I think we turned the puck over 21 times in the first period," Marshall said. "That allowed them to get some chances and spend a lot of time in our zone."
Sophomore Andrew Olson echoed his coach's thoughts.
"They did a good job trapping us," Olson said. "We weren't moving our feet or making the passes that we needed to."
The second period was much more even; the Huskies reduced the turnovers, yet were still unable to cut into the Crusaders lead.
The third period was more of the same, with an early Holy Cross goal pushing the lead to 4-0. Michael Coppola added a late, meaningless goal to make the final 4-1.
With any momentum gained from the win earlier in the week gone, Olson said there is only one thing the team needs to do to get it back when it heads to Colorado next week to play Air Force - practice.
"We're going to have to have a great week in practice and come out at Air Force and hopefully get two wins out there," Olson said.
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