Hockey East Journal: For UMass, no place like home

By Andrew Merritt

The Mullins Center isn’t exactly what you’d call a cozy place. Sitting out in the middle of an open field, next to the UMass campus’ central heating plant, the cavernous building seats 8,389 hockey fans, and when the Minutemen are playing a low-profile game, it can feel not entirely unlike a mausoleum. 

Coach Toot Cahoon peers down the Minutemen's bench. (Dave Arnold Photography)

For the Minutemen, however, it’s been home, sweet home, a place where they are undefeated at 6-0-3 – the only team in the nation without a home loss – and have bolstered their record to 8-8-5 overall.

Their most recent home outing could prove to be the biggest one of the year. For the second time this season, UMass beat then-league leader Boston College at the Mullins Center, sending the No. 4 Eagles home on Jan. 13 with a 4-0 shutout – the first-ever for the Minutemen against BC – keyed by a sparkling 35-save effort from freshman goaltender Steve Mastalerz (North Andover, Mass.), who notched his first career clean sheet.

The victory even did a little favor for coach Toot Cahoon’s (Lynn, Mass.) former coach, BU’s Jack Parker (Somerville, Mass.), whose squad moved into sole possession of first place with the Minutemen’s help against the Eagles, albeit only for 24 hours until BC beat Northeastern at Fenway Park the next night to get back into a tie.

The win came a little more than two months after the Minutemen dispatched the then-No. 1 Eagles with a 4-2 victory in Amherst, the first of four straight games without a loss. That streak took the edge off UMass’ 1-4-2 start, but was followed by a 1-3-1 stretch heading into the holiday break.

Since Dec. 7, however, UMass has lost just once – a non-conference defeat to Maine in the final of the Florida College Classic tournament. The Minutemen, who by the end of November were teetering on the edge of the playoff bubble, are now sitting in seventh, certainly playing as well or better than New Hampshire, Northeastern and Vermont below them.

Among the keys to the UMass surge is senior Danny Hobbs, who enters Friday’s game against Vermont with at least a point in each of the last five games, including a goal and an assist in the Jan. 7 win over the Catamounts at Fenway Park.

The Minutemen have outscored their opponents 18-13 over that stretch, providing just enough offense as the goaltending duties have been spread among Mastalerz, Jeff Teglia and Kevin Boyle, the latter of whom has had the lion’s share of the appearances thus far.

They’ve got 13 games left, all against Hockey East teams, and seven of them come at home. If they continue to hold serve at the Mullins Center – a plausible fate, if not a certain one considering two of those games are against third-place Merrimack, and one is against surprising UMass-Lowell – they’d end up with at least 26 points in league play, all but guaranteeing a playoff spot.

Cahoon said after the win at Fenway Park that “there’s an evolution” happening with his team. What the Minutemen evolve into is yet to be seen, but the prospects seem good for a warm winter in Amherst.

Games of the Week

UMass-Lowell vs. Northeastern, Friday and Saturday

The River Hawks were the hottest team in the league not so long ago, and the Huskies could say the same, but the weekend series finds them both coming off of two straight league losses, which for UML includes the 3-2 defeat at Northeastern on Dec. 10.

Hockey East power rankings

1. Boston University (13-6-1, 10-4-1 Hockey East) – We’re still waiting for the Terriers to feel the effects of losing Corey Trivino (dismissed) and Charlie Coyle (defected to Canadian major junior), and with a pair of victories in a mini-Beanpot weekend against Northeastern and Harvard, they don’t seem ready to comply yet, so they move to the top of our Hockey East rankings.
2. Boston College (14-8-1, 10-5-1) – The Eagles drop out of the top position in Hockey East for the first time since late November, after an ugly shutout loss to UMass on Friday that was followed up with a hard-fought win over Northeastern at Fenway the next night. They’ve quietly slid over the last six games, going 2-3-1.
3. UMass-Lowell (12-6-0, 7-5-0) – Coach Norm Bazin surely isn’t reaching for the panic button yet, but after going on an 8-1-0 tear through November and part of December, the River Hawks are winless in their last two league games, including last Friday’s 3-2 overtime loss to cellar-dwelling Vermont.
4. Merrimack (12-4-5, 8-3-3) – Seems like things are getting back to normal a bit in North Andover, though the Warriors certainly would like to have more than a win and two draws in their last three games, and Wakefield, Mass. native Joe Cannata’s 63-for-67 save performance last weekend put him in the record books with the program’s all-time saves mark (2,698).
5. Maine (10-8-3, 7-7-2) – The Black Bears have been on a tear since Thanksgiving, but were tripped up over the weekend at Merrimack and took just one point from the weekend after going undefeated in their previous four games.
6. Northeastern (8-9-3, 4-9-2) – The Huskies remain the streakiest team in Hockey East, having followed their six-game win streak in November/December with a 1-3-1 stretch since Dec. 30, and two one-goal losses to Beanpot foes BU and BC last weekend.
7. Providence (9-9-2, 7-5-1) – The Friars snapped a four-game winless streak with an effective 5-2 victory at Vermont on Sunday, led by East Providence native Derek Army’s two goals and one assist, but they take on league leader BU in a home-and-home this weekend.
8. UMass (8-8-5, 4-6-4) – There are probably still some growing pains ahead, but the Minutemen have steadily improved this season, and look like a legitimate playoff team despite their sub-.500 league record.
9. New Hampshire (8-11-2, 5-8-1) – The Wildcats put together their first back-to-back wins since Nov. 5 with Saturday’s 4-1 victory over Dartmouth. Or maybe we should say Stevie Moses’s 4-1 victory over Dartmouth, since the Leominster, Mass., native scored all four of UNH’s goals, after also scoring the only one in a 1-0 victory over Providence on Jan. 11. It was the second four-goal game for Moses, who also had a hat-trick-plus-one on Nov. 26 against Alabama-Huntsville.
10. Vermont (5-16-1, 2-12-1) – If the Catamounts have to settle for playing spoiler this season, they showed on Friday that they’re up to the task, scoring three unanswered goals, including Brett Bruneteau’s game-winner, to steal a 3-2 overtime victory from UMass-Lowell.

Andrew Merritt can be reached at MerrittNEHJ@gmail.com.