The Arizona hockey team wrapped up its second season last month, missing out on the 20 team national tournament, despite an impressive resume, because of its struggles down the stretch.

The Daily Wildcat caught up with head coach Sean Hogan before he departed for nationals where the USA hockey assistant coach will evaluate talent for the World University Games next year to talk about the future of UA hockey.

Daily Wildcat: Is there any news on a new ice rink in Tucson?

Hogan: Yeah, it’s an outside the University of Arizona thing that’s going on. So, there is a group in Tucson that’s interested in building a rink for their own business plan and their own purposes and we could possibly rent ice there. Whether that ever happens or comes to fruition I don’t know, but it’s not a University of Arizona project.

If there is a new rink would you guys expand into Division II, Division III teams?

You know what, I don’t know, we haven’t thought that far ahead, it’s all gonna depend on if that ever happens. But right now I’m happy with the TCC in terms of our games, we just obviously need more practice ice.

It just seems that if you had more ice time…

Oh yeah, we’d be a better team for sure. I mean, the last month of the season we didn’t practice much at the TCC, we had to go travel to practice, travel to games. In that stretch we were only … what were we? 1-7 down the stretch? 1-7-1? Or 1-5-1, something like that down the stretch, with severe lack of practice time. That’s definitely something that of we want to continue to build the hockey program here, we’ll get adjusted. But we’re happy with our game day operations at the TCC for sure.

What’s the relationship between the divisions? Can you move people up and down like JV?

Yeah you can, but there’s … When I was at Oakland we started a Division III team, a Division I and Division III and there was some rules then. Like, when you move a player up, there’s a certain amount of times you can do it, you can’t just do it all the time, it’s not willy nilly and there’s some paper work that goes along with it. If we ever get to that case where we’re adding other hockey teams, that’ll be something that we’ll discuss more then, but right now we’re focused on developing the Division I program to a national contender.

Would it be possible to add a women’s team?

Oh, it would be very possible if there was more ice time. That would be something that would be really cool. And what that does is that just creates more out of state students [interested] in the University of Arizona hockey program and the University of Arizona. It’s not just another recruiting tool for hockey, but a recruiting tool for the University of Arizona as well.

There’s been some talk about the city building a new arena, do you think that will go anywhere?

I have no idea, that’s beyond me. No idea. There was a city council member that wanted to do it.

Hopefully it doesn’t take away from our ice time [laughs]. I’m happy with the TCC, it has so many unique characteristics about it. That crowd on [the UA’s last series] was awesome, there’s not a lot of better places in the nation than that on any level.