Huskies to experiment with new lineup

The last time the Huskies took the ice, over two weeks ago on Oct. 25, they were handed a 4-1 defeat at the hands of the Princeton Tigers in New Jersey. Following two weeks of practice and fine-tuning, UConn (5-3-2, 2-1-0 Hockey East) will look to get back on track in a Hockey East matchup with the Maine Black Bears (3-3-0, 0-2-0)

"They're starting to get sick of me in practice," coach Heather Linstad joked. "We've been working really hard on our conditioning and teamwork and the girls really just want to get back on the ice in a real game."

It has also been 19 days since the last home game. The Huskies look to come home and take a Hockey East victory out of the paws of the Black Bears.

"We play pretty well at home," Linstad said. "At home you know how the pucks come off the board and how the ice skates; they turn out to be slight advantages."

One mistake the Huskies can't afford to make is to underestimate their opponents. In their last conference game UConn was handed a 3-0 defeat at the hands of Northeastern, a team they beat handily twice and tied once last year. Northeastern came into Freitas with tremendous speed and a deadly power-play unit; overpowering a seemingly bewildered UConn team.

"Every team in the conference has improved, but so have we," Linstad said. "We need to work on our mental preparation before every game. We have to come out and play every game and not go into games where we may be the favorite and 'take the day off.' We've gotten past that."

While the Huskies play only one game against Maine this weekend, the team has many more back-to-back conference matchups.

"We have a lot of problems with inconsistency in the second game of a series," Linstad said. "We came out great against Princeton in the first game, and then flat in the second. We did the same thing up in Mankato, [Minn.] too."

Another area the team has struggled in is on power plays. The team is a dismal .196 percent, picking up only 11 goals in 56 chances with an extra skater. In UConn's 3-0 loss to Northeastern, they failed to convert on any of their eight power play chances.

"Our special teams have been poor lately," Linstad said. "We need to start scoring more goals and some of those should be coming on the power play. The other teams commit a lot of penalties against us and we need to take advantage of that."

With UConn's recent offensive struggles, Linstad has been shuffling the organization of the teams first two lines. The first line now consists of Dominique Thibault, Nicole Tritter and Monique Weber. The new second line is Amy Hollstein, Michelle Binning and Justine Cigna.

UConn's first line in the past few games of Thibault, Hollstein and Binning consisted of UConn's most proficient scorers. While excellent when on the ice, the team suffered as a whole when all three sat on the bench.

"We've been mixing up the lineup a little bit I guess you could say," Linstad said. "I think we've come to rely too much on Thibault in the past few games. If you want to be a good team you really need to have equal strength in all your lines and be comfortable with whoever is on the ice."

With a tough November schedule ahead including a home-and-away series with Boston College, and a road trip to Providence - the team that knocked the Huskies out of the Hockey East tournament a year ago ¬ the Maine game has tremendous significance.

"We've really thrown away three games this year, none of our losses were acceptable," Linstad said. "We have to go out there and play every shift like it's our last."

Staff Writer Jake Goldberg contributed to this story.