Huskies at UMass Lowell Tuesday on NESN

Tuesday, February 9

Lowell, MA

5:00 PM

University of Connecticut

UMass Lowell

Photo by: Stephen Slade

2/8/2021 5:37:00 PM | Men's Ice Hockey

Game Notes

Media Coverage

TV: NESN (pxp) Ryan Johnston (color) Jim Connelly

Video Stream: NESN.com | CollegeSportsLive.com (Outside New England)

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

Audio Stream: TuneIn.com

Live Stats: GoRiverHawks.com

Game Notes: UConn UMass Lowell

Ice Chips

UConn is back on the road on Tuesday night with a trip up to UMass Lowell for a 5 pm tilt live on NESN.
The Huskies and River Hawks face-off once already this season, back on December 21 in Storrs. UMass Lowell edged out a 2-1 win with a late goal from Zach Kaiser at 17:10 in the third period.
For the first time in program history, the UConn Huskies have played their way into the national polls. The Huskies cracked the USCHO.com Top-20 poll coming in at No. 20 this week and also were ranked No. 15 in the USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine Top-15.
The Huskies have won three-straight heading into Tuesday's match-up coming off the heels of a 4-1 win on the road at No. 14 Northeastern on Friday. Four different Huskies found the back of the net and the Huskies held a 42-25 advantage on shots in the win. After dropping the first 10 meetings with Northeastern in the all-time series, UConn has won five of the last seven match-ups after Friday's win.
UConn junior goaltender Tomas Vomacka won his third Hockey East Defensive Player of the Week after Friday's win. Vomacka made 24 saves on the night and after allowing a first period power play goal kept Northeastern off the scoreboard over the final two periods en route to his eighth win on the season.
Vomacka has played every minute for the Huskies as well as the most minutes by any Hockey East goaltender this season. He has made 458 saves, the most by any goalie in the league and ranks third in save percentage at .918 percent. His 2.53 goals against average is fifth among league leaders. Vomacka was named to the 2021 Mike Richter Award Watch List last week. This year's list consists of 35 goalies from across college hockey. The Mike Richter Award is given annually to the top goalie in men's NCAA Division I hockey since 2014.
In Friday's win, junior Jonny Evans picked-up his team-leading 12th goal on the season and his second game-winner.
It was announced last week that Evans has been named a candidate for the 2021 Hobey Baker Award, given annually to college hockey's top player. Fan-voting online is now open thru March 7 at HobeyBaker.com/vote. Evans has a pair of Hockey East Player of the Week awards this year and his 21 points (12g/9a) is tied for tops in the league. His 12 goals is leading the conference and is tied for second nationally.
Freshman Artem Shlaine extended his point streak to six-straight games after scoring his first collegiate goal in Friday's win at Northeastern. Shlaine owns the longest point streak among Huskies at six games (1g/6a).
Junior Jachym Kondelik collected two more assists in the Northeastern win and now has 16 assists on the year. He leads Hockey East in assists and is tied for third nationally, averaging 1.00 assists per game.
Rookie defenseman John Spetz was the runner-up for Hockey East Rookie of the Month in January. Spetz had seven points in January on two goals and five assists. He also had 24 blocked shots during the month. On the season, he is tied for eighth in the league in rookie scoring (3g/6a) along with classmate Hudson Schandor (4g/5a) and is tied for ninth among all the league's defensemen in scoring. His 38 blocked shots leads Hockey East.
The UConn power play opened the season just 3-for-42 (.071) through the season's first nine games but has scored a goal in six of the last eight games (12-33/.364). Junior Carter Turnbull is second in Hockey East with four power play goals and tied for fifth in power play points with seven (4g/3a).
With the addition of Ryan Tverberg in the second semester, 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.

This Season vs. UMass Lowell

December 21, 2020 - L, 2-1 @ Freitas Ice Forum

The Huskies lost a hard fought 2-1 match-up with then No. 17 UMass Lowell River Hawks at home in the Freitas Ice Forum back in December.
UMass Lowell's Zach Kaiser scored the game-winning goal at 17:10 in the third period to secure their first win on the season.
The two teams traded power play goals, with UML's Carl Berglund scoring in the first period and UConn's Carter Turnbull finding the back of the net in the second period before Berglund delivered the game-winner in the closing minutes of the third.
UConn outshot UMass Lowell, 32-26 on the night and both teams were 1-for-4 on the power play.
Junior Tomas Vomacka stopped 24 shots. UML freshman goaltender Henry Welsch made 31 saves to record his first collegiate win.