By Brittany Burke
By the time this article goes to print the NCAA Frozen Four Championship will have already happened, the UConn women will have already had their parade and the Yale Bulldogs will be in the midst of celebrating their 4-0 victory.
Although the game was a handful of days ago there is no denying what affect it had on the state of Connecticut and most importantly Connecticut hockey.
First, how do you choose who to root for? Living in Wallingford, I don’t live any closer to one than I do the other, they’re equally 20 minutes away from me. Most people in my part of the state could say they have the same problem with Yale and Quinnipiac being just 7.7 miles apart, separated by Whitney Avenue.
Even though it doesn’t matter which team wins, Connecticut benefits from this no matter what, it’s always a better time if you’re rooting for one over the other. So in the end I chose the QU Bobcats, which proved to be the wrong decision.
They say it’s hard to beat a team four times in a season and the theory was proven right Saturday night. However, either team I, or any other impartial CT fan decided on would have just cause because both teams had a remarkable story.
On one side you have the Yale Bulldogs who came into the tournament the underdogs (no pun intended) to beat fellow New Englanders, UMass and advance to the final. This is the first time an Ivy League team has made it all the way in decades.
Then you have the Bobcats, the team who began in the ’70s as nothing more than a club team, much like CCSU has today. They built their program from nothing and found a solid leader in Rand Pecknold. The club team aspect aside, it’s hard not to root for a school that we see continuously on our own New Britain campus thanks to the common NEC ties. (Just as a side note you were also able to see the Robert Morris name along the boards).
Both teams have a strong offensive core backed by even better goal tending. With QU’s Matthew Peca belonging to the Tampa Bay Lightning, their goaltender Eric Hartzell, a Hobey Baker award finalist, and Yale’s Rob O’Gara within the Bruins organization it wasn’t a matter of who had the most talent. It wasn’t even a question of who wanted it more because no matter who won, the team was leaving with their organization’s first NCAA Title.
This was honestly a game that I could say it didn’t matter who won. These two teams helped put the state of Connecticut in the forefront in a sport that is often put on the backburner. Unless it’s the Hartford Whalers people don’t seem to care to talk about hockey, but with these two teams playing for the national title it’s hard not to sit back and take notice. Even the most passive of fans in the state was talking about the game.
I was a bit disheartened walking into a Bob’s in Hamden Saturday afternoon only to find they had no Frozen Four memorabilia, but instead an entire section dedicated to the UConn Women.
Yes, they won a championship, their eighth, but no matter what the outcome another Connecticut team was coming back a champion and that shouldn’t be forgotten. Even if they aren’t the Huskies.
My outlook got better as I drove down Whitney Avenue to find signs outside bars proclaiming they were the midpoint between the two schools, so stop in and celebrate. I don’t know what the mood was like in Hamden but flashing NCAA signs littered the New Haven streets. The Hartford Courant had front page and sports section articles dedicated to different facets of the tournament as did the New Haven Register.
People were proud of the teams playing in Pittsburgh and it made me proud to be a Connecticut hockey fan.
More often than not when you say you’re from this state people immediately connect you with UConn, which isn’t a bad thing but there’s only so much Husky basketball one can take. This NCAA Men’s Ice Hockey Championship served as a reminder that the state of Connecticut is more than UConn basketball.
And in the case of the 2013 champions, UConn isn’t the only dogs that bleed blue and white.