BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings
DURHAM, NH- Ryan Tverberb and Artem Schlaine had a goal and an assist helping the UCONN Huskies to a surprising 6-1 blowout win over UNH Saturday night.
This weekend, the Huskies won their fourth-straight Hockey East game and captured all six available standings points. UCONN moves to 14-11-0 overall and 10-6-0 in Hockey East play. UNH fell below the .500 line to 12-13-0 and 6-10-1 in the conference.
UCONN moves into sixth-place in the Hockey East standings. They are just one point behind Providence College and Merrimack and have a game in hand.
They will play a rescheduled game with the Merrimack College Warriors Tuesday night at North Andover, MA, at Lawler Rink in one of their eight final regular season games at 7 PM.
Four of their last eight games will be televised. Three will be on NESN Plus and one on local TV, CW20.
HOW THEY WON
Despite playing on the road, UCONN seemed more at ease on the larger international ice surface than UNH did and scored timely goals. UCONN played an even-keel road game before a capacity crowd at Whittemore Center. The crowd was taken out of the game en route to securing their largest margin of victory this season.
As a road team, they scored the first goal early in the contest.
Tverberg was in deep on the right-wing side. He fed Hudson Schandor coming down the middle of the ice to set up his third goal of the season. An unplanned assist went to defenseman Colton Huard. The freshman was sensational two weeks ago and, in this instance, skated backward into the net, taking out UNH goalie Mike Robinson at 4:17.
The only down moment of the game defensively for the Huskies came as the Wildcats Kalle Eriksson left point drive in the last minute of the first period and was stopped by goaltender Darion Hanson. The puck, however, rebounded right to the stick of Tyler Ward with 41.4 seconds left. He immediately took his shot and scored his fourth of the year.
UCONN TAKES THE LEAD
At 4:29 of the second period, UCONN took the lead. Harrison Rees was set at the right point and sent a diagonal pass to Jachym Kondelik. The big Czech center went forehand-to-backhand to tally his ninth goal of the season. Robinson was down and out and kicked the net off its magnetic pegs with his right leg. The ref signaled an automatic goal for what he deemed an intentional delay before the puck slid into the dislodged net.
UCONN made the score 3-1 as Carter Turnbull got the puck away from Eriksson and his shot attempt from the left point. Turnbull scored on a clean breakaway, putting the puck just over Hanson’s glove at 11:49.
UCONN TAKES CONTROL
At 13:47, the margin became three goals when Jarred Gourley’s left point drive was tipped about ten feet in front of the net by Vladislav Firstov for his eighth of the season, making it 4-1 and leaving UNH in the rearview mirror.
UCONN finished off the scoring with two late goals.
With Robinson pulled early for an extra attacker, Schlaine tallied an empty-netter at 16:14.
Tverberg was tackled by Ryan Verrier. The ref raised his arm for a delayed penalty, but Tverberg popped right up, kept his feet moving, and went in on Robinson. Then, using several dekes to confuse the UNH netminder, he slipped a forehand past him for his eleventh goal of the season to the far side at 18:50, completing the scoring.
