STORRS – Elaine Chuli operates in and around a blue six-foot radius of ice, moving pipe to pipe to protect a goal that is six feet wide and four feet tall. She works the crease better than any goalie in UConn history, probably as well as any player in women’s college hockey and nearly as well as anyone in the world.
Dreams of this started in Waterford, Ontario, where Chuli spent her childhood riding dirt bikes, four-wheelers and snowmobiles across open farmland, and they have already taken her onto the international stage.
“She was very active and very competitive in whatever she did,” said Jill Chuli, Elaine’s mother. “She didn’t play anything to come in second.”
Chuli, 21, an accounting major, is nearing the end of her college career. A four-year starter, she has been a constant in a complicated and important time in UConn women’s hockey history. Her sprawling saves have made an imprint that will leave the program in a better place than where she found it.
Chuli was one of seven seniors honored at Freitas Ice Forum before Saturday’s game against Maine, a 4-3 UConn victory, in which she set the Hockey East career record for saves, and she has only so many games left in a Huskies jersey. UConn has two regular season games remaining, Friday and Saturday at New Hampshire, and has clinched the No. 4 seed and home ice for a first-round series beginning Feb. 26.
Four years at UConn will not be the final hockey chapter for Chuli, who will graduate in May and devote the next two years of her life to a goal of representing Canada at the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
“It’s definitely an obsession,” Chuli said. “I live for it. I’ve kind of put my other life on hold, just to focus on that for now.”
In preparation, Chuli will play top-level hockey somewhere in North America the next two years. She is considering several options, and she is one of several players being considered for three spots.
“I just live my life knowing that every day I give 150 percent effort,” Chuli said. “And If I do come up short, I have no regrets. I was always like that – go, go, go.”
In 98 games at UConn, Chuli is 25-59-11 for a team that has increased its victory total each year. The Huskies, with coach Chris MacKenzie now in his third year, have grown from one of the worst teams in the nation in previous coach Heather Linstad’s final years to a solid middle-of-the-pack Hockey East team.
Chuli has remained involved with the Canadian national program. Before UConn, she played on the U-18 team that won a world championship in 2012. She left the Huskies for two weeks in January to play for the U-22 team at the Nations Cup in Germany. Last summer in Calgary, Chuli was in camp with the Canadian national team before returning to UConn for her senior year.
Chuli has a .940 save percentage this season. The UConn single-season record of .935 was set by Jennie Bellonio in 2007-08. If Chuli finishes above Bellonio’s mark, or ties it, she will set the program’s career record of .921 shared by Alexandra Garcia (2008-12), Brittany Wilson (2005-09) and Kaityln Shain (2002-06). Chuli already owns the UConn career saves record with 3,260, having surpassed Wilson’s 2,391 last season, and she has 2,144 saves in Hockey East play, one more than Vermont’s Roxanne Douville in 2010-14.
“She has the ability to make one or two spectacular saves that she maybe shouldn’t make each game, keeps us in there at times if we’re not playing well,” MacKenzie said of Chuli, who set a career high and program record with 59 saves Oct. 30 in a 4-0 loss to top-ranked Boston College. “She’s someone who has earned everything she’s received — a scholarship, exposure, accolades. It all comes from work ethic and a commitment level that is as good as I’ve seen in anyone I’ve coached.”
Chuli’s UConn mask features her favorite Bible scripture, Philippians 4:13, a Canadian flag and the UConn oak leaf. She was always meticulous about this sort of thing. As a child, she had a specially-designed Scooby Doo helmet with bats and a haunted house.
“She fell in love with all of it, loved the equipment,” said Elaine’s father, Rick Chuli. “She’s obviously not ready to give up hockey. I support her in anything she does. Whatever decision she makes [on how to spend the next two years], I’ll have a little bit of input but at her age it’s her decision.”
Many childhood evenings were spent watching Toronto Maple Leafs games with her mother, father and sister, Ericka, 20, who is an economics major at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. When the girls are home for the summer, they manage the books at a car repair business owned by Rick and a farm equipment sales business owned by Jill.
Perhaps Elaine’s love of numbers and hockey are not coincidental. She idolized Curtis Joseph, the Leafs’ goalie in 1998-2002 and a Gold Medalist with Team Canada in 2002, and took pride in memorizing the statistics he posted.
Chuli started playing hockey at age 7, switched to goalie three years later and was soon involved in power skating programs and, in her middle school years, playing for a boys AAA team in Brantford, Ontario. She became an elite college recruit.
“I didn’t want to go to a school and sit,” Chuli said. “There are a lot of good goalies everywhere. When you’re battling, no one likes to sit on the bench. Here, I’m close to 100 games. Coming to UConn has been really good for my development. I see a lot of shots in games. You can see as many shots as you want in practice, but when you get out there for a game it’s different. That’s really helped me, that I’ve seen these opportunities in front of me in a game, having to make those saves.”
UConn advanced to the Hockey East semifinals last season and lost to Boston College. This season, BC is 32-0 and looking like one of the best teams in the sport’s history.
The Huskies have lost three times to the Eagles — 4-0 Oct. 30 in Boston and 4-0 the next day in Storrs, a two-game sweep in which Chuli made 100 saves. In the most recent matchup, Feb. 6 in Storrs, UConn lost 5-4, with Chuli making 33 saves. The Huskies became just the second BC opponent to stay within a goal and the first to score four times.
“Without Chuli, it could have been a lot different,” said UConn forward Justine Fredette, a sophomore from Winnipeg, Manitoba. “She’s the most athletic person I’ve ever known. It’s neat to see such a high level athlete on your team. She’s Team Canada, that’s the benchmark, where we all want to be.”
