HARTFORD — On a walk through the basement of the XL Center, two hours before a UConn men’s hockey game, one is likely to hear a loud pounding, echoing throughout. No construction going on. Too loud for ping-pong. Basketball practice, on Friday night at least, was in Storrs.
This would be Logan Terness, standing two feet on front of a cement pillar outside the Huskies’ locker room, firing rubber balls and catching them with both hands.
“He does that every day,” coach Mike Cavanaugh said. “He does that whether he’s playing or not.”
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Terness also practices his juggling all to keep his eyes and hands moving at blur speed, and in coordination, all to be ready to stand tall in goal for UConn, as he did in the scoreless tie with Ohio State.
“It just gets me in the right mindset to go and play,” Terness said. “It gets my eyes warmed up, gets my body used to tracking. It’s been very useful over the years, part of the routine I’ve been building, so I stick with that.”
Big things are happening for the Huskies, who were ranked 17th in the nation going into the two-game, out-of-conference series against the 11th-ranked Buckeyes, which concluded Saturday. And Terness is needed to be a big part of it. After losing a season to the pandemic, he came to UConn as a freshman and was an understudy to grad student Darion Hanson, who was a rock last season as the Huskies reached the Hockey East final.
“He was a really great mentor for me,” Terness said. “He just taught me so much about the mental game and how he approaches it, so relaxed. He just likes to have fun out there. He never really takes things seriously, never takes a loss to hard, never takes a win too big. From him, the biggest thing was his mindset.”
Terness played only one game, a 3-1 loss to AIC, in 2021-22. But he used his talented hands to paint Hanson’s helmet, portraits of Kemba Walker and Maya Moore. This season, Terness’ artwork is his own to display.
UConn sophomore Logan Terness. His helmet artwork includes a "rogue husky" on the top. He had 43 saves in a scoreless tie with Ohio State on Friday. (UConn Athletics photo/Clarus Multimedia Group) (Clarus Multimedia Group/Clarus Multimedia Group)
“My own helmet is a little more complex,” he said. “I built up some new skills over the summer. I wanted to bring in the Ice Bus, so I put some ice around it. I put a rogue husky on the top, just sort of a spirit animal to bring myself out. On both sides I put the Husky logo, and a dogsled team on one side, representative of Canada for me. On the other side, a UConn flag. And I see a lot of UConn license plates around campus, I wanted to make a custom one for my chin, so I put LT-35 on it. I thought that was a cool touch.”
It’s a busy helmet, for sure, and was Terness, in his third start of the season ever busy Friday. A large contingent of family, including both sets of grandparents, made the cross-continent trip from Burnaby, British Columbia, to Hartford, many wearing Terness’ No. 35 orange and black Trail Smoke Eaters jersey. Burness was the BC Hockey League’s rookie of the year in that jersey, before the pandemic. Here’s how orange and black became the new blue and white:
“Jeff Tambellini, his coach, called us and said, ‘Hey, this kid’s work ethic is off the charts, he competes like hell,’” Cavanaugh said. “What hurt him was the pandemic, he didn’t get to really play.”
The Huskies were outshot 15-4 in the first period, 16-6 in the second, and Ohio State had long stretches on the power play, including a two-man advantage at the start of the first period. UConn’s defense and special teams were outstanding, but Terness stopped 43 shots, more than he had seen in his first two games, 4-1 wins over Vermont and Union with 15 saves in each.
“It was just a good experience,” Terness said. “For me being fairly new to college hockey, a little more shot volume than I’ve been seeing, that was good for me. It’s energizing seeing more shots. Over the game it’s just keeping the same process and making one save at a time.”
Terness, 6 feet 1 and 185 pounds, stopped all four shots in the overtime period. Finally, in the shootout, Ohio State’s top scorer, Travis Treloar, flipped one past him, but the game goes in the books as a tie, which can only help build UConn’s NCAA Tournament resume. His goals-against average is 0.67, his save percentage .973.
“Last year, he prepared for every game, you’d see him out here before games and think he was the starting goaltender,” Cavanaugh said. “Vince Stalletti does an incredible job with our goaltenders, and he’s got Logan in a great frame of mind. Because of his size, he has to be on-point technically and not give up a lot of rebounds that create second chances and third chances, that’s where he’s at right now. He has a chance to be a really good goaltender.”
More in your Sunday Read:
Trisha Bailey, who grew up in East Hartford and graduated from Weaver High, stepped up this week with what UConn calls the largest cash contribution ever received by an alumnus, a lead gift to start construction of a new student-athlete performance and academic support center.
“Trisha Bailey is an American success story that has its roots in the classroom and in competition at UConn,” Athletic Director David Benedict said as the gift was announced. “On this 50th anniversary year of Title IX, it is an honor to have Trisha’s name on this world-class new facility as an enduring legacy for generations to come.”
The $60 million project is an 80,000-square foot renovation and expansion of the former rec center and the Greer Fieldhouse, and will be a new home for UConn’s six Olympic sports programs, five of which are women’s programs. Bailey’s donation is unspecified, but it is at least $8 million, based on past, announced gifts.
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Bailey, born in Jamaica, graduated from UConn’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences in 1999 and later earned an MBA and Ph.D. in organizational leadership. She ran cross country and track and field at Weaver and UConn. She now lives in Florida and has founded numerous companies, in pharmaceuticals and real estate, as well as a charitable foundation. Her life and career is a resounding statement: that great heights are reachable for Hartford-area and UConn students.
“It’s not so much the journey that I found to be most important,” Bailey said. “It’s the way I treated those along the way that mattered the most, and when I look at the beginning of it all, UConn was right there.”
* Since recovering from his knee injury and breaking into the Ravens’ defensive rotation, lineman Travis Jones, the third-round pick from New Haven and UConn, is averaging 22 snaps (29, 19 and 22 in three games). He has two tackles, but has impressed in clogging the opponent’s run game. The Ravens have allowed 122 yards per game since Jones’ debut vs. the Patriots Sept. 25. Baltimore plays the Giants at MetLife Stadium Sunday at 1 p.m.
* Alec Iurato, the Bristol police officer wounded in the shooting that took the lives of fellow officers, Sgt. Dustin DeMonte and officer Alex Hamzy, played Division III baseball at Miseracordia in Pennsylvania.
Please keep former Misericordia University baseball player Alec Iurato ’18 and his family in your prayers as he was wounded in the line of duty as a member of the Bristol, CT police department, October 12.
* UConn football coach Jim Mora wore a hat with the Bristol PD insignia during the game with Ball State.
* Now that Tage Thompson, repping UConn in the NHL, has a seven-year, $50 million contract extension, the reward for a 38-goal season for the Sabres in 2021-22, he and his growing family can settle in Buffalo, as reported by the Buffalo News this week. Thompson, 24, and his wife, Rachel, also a UConn grad, have a three-month old son. The best news of all: Rachel has recovered from cancer.
* The scoring slack can be picked up, but the UConn men’s basketball team will really miss the wide range of good things Andre Jackson Jr. does, while he is out with his broken finger.
* The Jets named Hall-West Hartford’s Frank Robinson III their high school coach of the week for the tri-state region. Coach Robert Saleh wore a blue Hall Titans shirt at his Friday presser. The Jets will send a $2,500 donation to support the school’s football program, with Robinson honored and the team invited to a game later this season. Hall was 0-4 before beating previously undefeated Glastonbury Oct. 7.
Pretty cool to see @nyjets head coach Robert Saleh sporting a @HallWHAthletics shirt today. Nice gesture to support Titans football & the Robinson family! @WTNH #cthsfb pic.twitter.com/ouI8TcFUmS
While he was managing the Yankees in 1995, Buck Showalter caused a stir when he got the umpires to confiscate Tony Phillips’ bat for inspection. An X-Ray showed it wasn’t corked. The man doesn’t change: old school, top step, always on the alert, the kind manager a lot of teams’ fan bases want.
So the backlash when Showalter wanted Joe Musgrove’s ears checked last Sunday surprised me. Sure, he could have done it earlier in the game, depending on when the information that Musgrove’s spin rate was unusually high reached the dugout. But if you’re going to make a huge deal out of any form of cheating — which is what happens today — then you can’t fault a manager who suspects something for wanting it checked out.
Dom Amore can be reached at damore@courant.com