It’s been 245 days since the University of Massachusetts played a live, meaningful hockey game. Sometimes, with everything going on in the world, it feels like even longer than that, especially for a team that was on a mission to prove itself in 2019-20 coming off its first-ever trip to the national championship game the year before.
On that particular night, March 5, UMass — then ranked eighth in the national polls and poised for second straight appearance in the NCAA tournament — pitched a 1-0 shutout over the last-place Vermont Catamounts, locking up the second seed for the Hockey East tournament, just one week before it was set to unfold.
But — spoiler alert — that tournament, and anything to come after it, never happened.
On the eve of the postseason, Hockey East, followed by the NCAA, called an abrupt end to the season, canceling all playoff events due to the coronavirus.
Like most aspects of life during this COVID-19 age, it’s been an unusual eight months for head coach Greg Carvel and company ever since, as the Minutemen and the rest of Hockey East have been patiently awaiting the go-ahead to begin a new campaign.
“It’s been a lot of sitting and waiting,” Carvel told New England Hockey Journal this week. “A lot of discussions amongst coaches in our league, a lot of trying to keep the team focused and motivated and excited. It’s been a lot of unusual activity that usually we don’t have to deal with.”
Since reconvening in Amherst at the end of August with no real idea of what the winter would entail, UMass has been gradually preparing for the 2020-21 season.
“We’ve kind of known that it was going to be a long stretch before games,” Carvel said. “We’ve kind of eased our way in. September was a lot of skill development. October, we transitioned to more team systems stuff, but at the same time going from three skates a week to four. Now, we’re up to five skates a week right now.”
With very few students on campus, it’s been a pretty ideal scenario for the group, Carvel said, with zero positive tests linked to the team during its two-month stay.
“Our players have been outstanding,” Carvel said. “We have a nice bubble here; it’s made it a lot easier for our guys. We don't see anybody else; we don't interact with any other teams at our practice facility, we don't see any other sports teams, so it's been fairly easy as long as the guys away from the rink are following protocols, which they have been.
“(As a team) I think we’ve shown that whatever they ask us to do, we’ll do it, and the kids have done an outstanding job with every part of it.”
Hockey East made its first statement regarding the 2020-21 season on July 29, expressing its intent to at least attempt a winter season. That much was known.
After that, it was anybody’s guess what would happen until early September when the Hockey Commissioners Association announced the season — if there was even going to be one at all, — would be pushed back from its usual mid-October start date.
“I think the hardest part has been wanting our league and administrators to make a decision on when the season is going to start and what exactly things are going to look like,” Carvel said. “There's been a lot of unknowns that we’re finally starting to, slowly, get some final answers on, but they’ve done a good job of not jumping early and making any promises without knowing it was going to be an actuality.”
Now, with a schedule on the horizon, the Minutemen will keep playing the waiting game in their quiet rink, which, Carvel said, has turned out to be somewhat of a positive, giving his team a space to feel like things are normal for a few hours each day.
“It’s got to a point where we feel fortunate that, all of us, we get to come to what feels almost like reality where we get to come to the rink every day and challenge and exercise, and keep growing,” Carvel said. “Because we see a lot of examples of people who are just stuck where they are in the pandemic; they’re not growing.”
liam.flaherty@hockeyjournal.com
@_LiamFlaherty
