Huskies Face UNH in Home and Home Series

Friday, January 1

Durham, NH

4:00 PM

University of Connecticut

New Hampshire

Jachym Kondelik rips a shot against Providence on December 28, 2020.

Photo by: Stephen Slade

12/31/2020 10:14:00 AM | Men's Ice Hockey

Game Notes

Media Coverage

TV (Fri.): NESN

Video Stream: (Fri) NESN.com (Outside New England - CollegeSportsLive.com) | (Sat.) CollegeSportsLive.com/HockeyEast (pxp) Randy Brochu

Radio (Sat): UConn Sports Network from Learfield IMG College - ESPN 97-9 FM (pxp) Bob Joyce; (color) Adam Giardino

Audio Stream: TuneIn.com

Live Stats: UNHWildcats.com (Fri.) | Statbroadcast (Sat.)

Twitter: @UConnMHOC

Game Notes: UConn New Hampshire

Ice Chips

The UConn Huskies will take on the New Hampshire Wildcats this weekend in a home-and-home Hockey East series. The Huskies will head to UNH on Friday afternoon for a 4 pm match-up live on NESN and return to campus on Saturday to host the Wildcats again at 4 pm.
The Huskies are coming off a 2-0 win over No. 15 Providence at home on Monday night. New Hampshire is coming off a 4-0 loss at home to No. 9 Massachusetts on Wednesday afternoon.
Last season, the Huskies swept the season series posting matching 7-4 wins over the Wildcats. In UConn's win at UNH, junior Jonny Evans recorded his second hat-trick of the season and finished with a career-high five points to lead the way. In the sweep win at the XL Center, junior Jachym Kondelik scored a pair as 12 different Huskies recorded a point.
UConn junior goaltender Tomas Vomacka stopped 37 shots on the way to recording his second career shutout in Monday's win over the Friars. Vomacka has played every minute in net for the Huskies and through seven games owns a 2.81 goals against average and a .915 save percentage.
Senior captain Adam Karashik got the game-winner against Providence and in doing so scored his first goal since his freshman season, a span of 80 games. Junior Jonny Evans scored and added an assist in the win.
Evans is currently on a career-best five-game point streak (3g/4a) and has tallied at least a point in six of the seven games this season. Evans leads the team in scoring with eight points (3g/5a) and is tied for fifth in Hockey East in points. Evans came into the season as the Huskies leading career goal scorer and now has 20 goals in 56 career games.
Junior Jachym Kondelik assisted on both UConn goals in the win over Providence, recording his first multi-point game of the season and a team-high 13th of his career. He has four points on four assists this season and is UConn's current active scoring leader with 53 points (12g/41a) in 74 games.
The Huskies will make a roster addition for the second semester with the addition freshman forward Ryan Tverberg. Tverberg was announced as signing an NLI with UConn back in November and will enter school for the spring semester and bring added depth to the Huskies forwards. The 5-11 righty shot forward is from Richmond Hill, Ontario and spent the 2019-20 season playing for the Toronto Jr. Canadians of the OJHL and piled up 51 points in 47 games. He scored 26 goals and added 25 assists and was named to the OJHL All-Prospect first team. In the 2020 NHL Draft, he was taken in the 7th round by the Toronto Maple Leafs.
UConn will be without a pair of sophomores in forward Vladislav Firstov and defenseman Yan Kuznetsov who are currently with Team Russia at the 2021 IIHF World Junior Championships being held in Edmonton, Alberta, Dec. 25 through Jan. 5. Both Firstov and Kuznetsov were named to the final roster making history as the first Russian born NCAA student-athletes to make Russia's national team for the annual event. The Huskies previously have had three players appear in the prestigious international tournament under head coach Mike Cavanaugh (Tage Thompson - Team USA/2017*; Adam Huska - Team Slovakia/2016&2017; Jachym Kondelik - Team Czech Republic/2019). *-Won the gold medal
The Huskies are back on campus for the first time since the 2013-14 season as they will play all their home games at the Mark Edward Freitas Ice Forum in Storrs. UConn has called the XL Center in Hartford home since joining Hockey East in 2014-15. Only two Hockey East schools have played games at Freitas in UMass Lowell and Merrimack.
In the 2020-21 HEA Preseason Coaches' Poll, the Huskies were picked to finish seventh in this year's polling of the league's head coaches. This will be the Huskies seventh season of play in Hockey East and in five of their first six seasons in the league, the Huskies have outplayed their preseason prediction.
With the addition of Tverberg, the Husky lineup will feature nine NHL draft picks in 2020-21, a new program-high. That number climbed with the 2020 NHL Draft this fall as sophomore Yan Kuznetsov (Calgary/2nd Rd) and freshmen Artem Shlaine (New Jersey/5th Rd), Nick Capone (Tampa Bay/6th Rd) and Tverberg (Toronto/7th Rd) heard their names called.