UAA’s J.P. Steele reaches in for the puck as Judah Makway, of UAA, and Reilly Funk, of Bemidji State, and Tye Spencer, of UAA, jockey for position at the Avis Alaska Sports Complex in Anchorage, AK on Friday, October 3, 2025. (Bob Hallinen Photo)

The 2025-26 regular season didn’t shake out well as the University of Alaska Anchorage hockey team had hoped. The Seawolves posted a 5-25-1 record, failing to reach double-digit wins for the second year in a row and the third time since the hockey program was reinstated in 2021.

But this week, the Seawolves have an opportunity to play for a title as one of five teams participating in the inaugural United Collegiate Hockey Cup tournament.

“Regardless of anybody’s record going into it, it’s an opportunity for our guys to play for a championship against the other independents and gives us a finalization to our season and a taste of postseason hockey,” head coach Matt Shasby said.

UAA is traveling to Maryland Heights, Missouri, for the three-day event and will be joined by quartet of familiar foes in fellow NCAA Division I independent hockey programs Lindenwood, Long Island University, Stonehill College and in-state rival University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Shasby said the Seawolves are really excited to have something to play for this time around as opposed to an abrupt end to the regular season, which they’ve been accustomed to since returning four years ago.

“You take what you learn from the season, you take what you learn playing against these opponents, and now it’s a single-elimination tournament,” Shasby said. “It’s time for our guys to come together as a group and try to do something special here for three days. Hopefully they can get it done and have a pretty good memory about the season.”

The last time a UAA hockey team competed in a postseason tournament was in the 2019-20 season, when it faced Minnesota State in the first round of the WCHA Tournament.

While there is still a chance that they face top-seeded UAF if they prevail over Stonehill on Thursday at noon AKST, the fifth-seeded Seawolves are happy to be playing someone other than the Nanooks. UAA played against UAF in four straight games to close out the season, and played them twice over the four games before that.

“It’ll definitely be a breath of fresh air,” Shasby said. “They’re a tough opponent, they did a good job of securing the Governor’s Cup, and hopefully we can get a win on Thursday and see them on Friday in the semifinals.”

Since any hope they have of hoisting the United Collegiate Hockey Cup would require going through UAF, they still welcome the challenge but remain focused on getting past Stonehill first. The Seawolves beat the Skyhawks 4-0 in a road game in November. Stonehill returned the favor twice by sweeping UAA in a two-game series in Anchorage in early December.

“It’s going to be a great matchup there for the first game of the tournament,” Shasby said.

Coming together for a common cause

After multiple years of not having a way to close out their seasons with something meaningful to play for, the coaches of the independent NCAA Division I teams joined forces to come up with the idea for the tournament.

“We had conversations all throughout last year and we finally came to a decision on giving our guys something to play for at the end of the year,” Shasby said. “Let’s put something on the line to show college hockey that we have a tournament at the end of the year that will crown a champion.”

Once they got the ball rolling, the logistics came together quickly, and the athletic directors for each school coordinated to iron out the rules and regulations to bring the tournament to fruition.

“It was definitely a group effort, and all the coaches, programs and universities are excited about it for sure,” Shasby said.

UAA has been steadily building under Shasby’s tenure, notching signature wins over elite programs and playing at a high level at times even in narrow defeats.

To be able to contend and possibly even win the UCH Cup would be another major milestone in the journey to put Seawolves hockey back on the map.

“It’s massive,” Shasby said. “For any one of our five universities, it’d be a crowning moment to be able to lift that cup at the end of this thing, and it just shows that progress is happening and that your team is crowned a champion. … We didn’t have the greatest year on home ice, so for us to be able to bring this thing home would be a pretty special moment for our program.”