Every college hockey team faces adversity, in one form or another, over the course of a season.
UMass enters its final nine games of the regular season with 20 wins for the first time since 2006-07 and a three-point lead over Boston College at the top of the Hockey East standings, but all three of the team’s losses in league play came in the month of January.
Third-year head coach Greg Carvel’s team has not lost back-to-back games all season. He likes that battle-back spirit, especially entering a stretch run that includes three of the next five games against the Eagles and a Providence team it swept in a November home-and-home series.
“The only thing I like about losing is that it resets our team,” Carvel said after scoring seven goals in Friday’s win at Boston University. “You could tell that our guys (after a 4-3 loss in Maine on the prior Saturday) were refocused. … I thought we came out and played the brand of hockey we've been able to play most nights this year.”
The stars have been many for this year’s Minutemen, who boast the top four scorers in all of Hockey East. Senior Jacob Pritchard and sophomore defenseman Cale Makar have already become the first UMass pair of 30-point scorers in three years, while Makar’s second-year classmates Mitchell Chaffee and John Leonard (Amherst, Mass.) follow behind.
But Friday was freshman Ty Farmer’s night to come up big. The freshman blueliner from O’Fallon, Mo., had scored only twice all season and not since Nov. 8 against Providence before scoring the go-ahead and eventual game-winner against the Terriers, the latter on a breakaway.
“When you get a defenseman scoring two goals in the third period on the road, it shows you how good he is offensively,” Carvel said. …
“You've got to understand he isn't the best defensive player, and against good teams it gets exposed, but we recruited him for what he was able to do with the puck. He’s an excellent offensive player.”
Six of the team’s seven freshmen skaters have factored into the offense for UMass this season, with Farmer logging four goals and 12 total points. Marc Del Gaizo, who leads the class with 20 points, and Colin Felix have played in all 25 games this season, while forward Bobby Trivigno has a 7-11-18 line in 24 games.
Walter Brown Award
Prior to Monday’s start of the 67th Beanpot, the Gridiron Club of Greater Boston announced the 20 semifinalists for its Walter Brown Award, which is presented annually to the best American-born college hockey player in New England.
Quinnipiac’s Odeen Tufto, Yale’s Joe Snively, and Harvard’s Adam Fox are semifinalists for the second consecutive year. Tufto joins senior defensemen Chase Priskie and junior goaltender Andrew Shortridge as semifinalists from Quinnipiac, while senior Jacob Pritchard and sophomores John Leonard (Amherst, Mass.) and Mitchell Chaffee make UMass the second team with three players in the running.
Northeastern’s Tyler Madden and BU’s Joel Farabee are the only freshmen on the list. That same day, Madden scored his second overtime game-winner of the season to lift the Huskies past BU and within one win of their second consecutive Beanpot title.
Reigning Hobey Baker winner and current Vancouver Canuck Adam Gaudette (Braintree, Mass.) won the Walter Brown Award last year. New Hampshire sophomores goaltender Mike Robinson (Bedford, N.H.) and forward Charlie Kelleher (Longmeadow, Mass.) join Leonard as the three New Englanders among this year’s semifinalists.
Atlantic Hockey’s big weekend
The four New England-based Atlantic Hockey programs enjoyed a great past week, posting a combined 8-0-1 record. Sacred Heart’s win at UConn last Tuesday was the only non-league game in that span and preceded weekend sweeps for the Pioneers, first-place American International, and Bentley.
The Falcons swept Air Force to extend the nation’s longest current unbeaten streak to nine games (7-0-2) and their winning streak to five. Junior Aidan Pelino made 20 saves for a 4-0 shutout to complete the series a night after Rivers School product Brendan Hamblet (Hopkinton, Mass.) scored 2:03 into overtime to lift Bentley to a 4-3 win.
AIC picked up its fourth sweep of a league series this season with 6-4 and 6-3 wins over Niagara, thanks in part to four-point weekends from juniors Blake Christensen (2-2-4) and Kyle Stephan (1-3-4). Freshman Elijah Barriga, who played last season on UNLV’s club team, scored the game-winning goal on Saturday as the Yellow Jackets tied their single-season program record with 15 wins.
Holy Cross, meanwhile, is on its second three-game unbeaten streak of the season after going 1-0-1 against Army West Point. The Crusaders passed Canisius to move out of the bottom spot in the AHC standings.
Winning anywhere
Quinnipiac swept Clarkson and St. Lawrence on the road for only the third time as an ECAC Hockey club, but last weekend’s 4-2 and 7-2 wins allowed them to achieve the feat for the first time since November of 2012. Lake Superior State is the Division 1 team in the country with more true road wins than the Bobcats (11-2) and UMass Lowell (11-3) this season.
The Bobcats have averaged 4.08 goals per game and outscored their opponents by a 53-28 margin away from Hamden, Conn., this season. Tufto has recorded a nation-leading 25 of his 35 points in Quinnipiac’s 13 road games, including six (2-4-6) over the weekend against the Golden Knights and Saints to earn NCAA First Star of the Week honors. Overall, Quinnipiac has won 20 games for the seventh time in eight years.
Lowell has won eight consecutive road games since an overtime loss to Northeastern on Nov. 10. The River Hawks’ latest road triumph came last Friday at Matthews Arena, 3-1.
Loose pucks
― Sacred Heart’s Austin Magera continues to be a clutch performer as he scored two goals, including the game-winner, and added an assist in Saturday’s 3-1 win at Robert Morris. He is the lone New England freshmen and the only Atlantic Hockey player overall with five game-winning goals this season; he is tied with Priskie, Northeastern’s Zach Solow, UMass Lowell’s Ryan Dmowski (East Lyme, Conn.), and others for the national lead in that category.
― It’s no surprise that New Hampshire junior Liam Blackburn was named Hockey East Player of the Month earlier this week. The British Columbia native, who logged 11 points in all eight of UNH’s January games, had his nation-leading 15-game point streak snapped in this past weekend’s series with archrival Maine.
― No rookie in the country was more productive in January than Merrimack’s Chase Gresock, the Hockey East Rookie of the Month who scored five goals and totaled 10 points in eight games. UMass Lowell senior Christoffer Hernberg was the lone undefeated Hockey East goaltender last month as he went 4-0-1 with a .923 save percentage while sharing the net with junior Tyler Wall.
― Brown junior Brent Beaudoin (Londonderry, N.H.) has found his offensive groove in recent weeks. He has scored seven of his eight points in the last seven of his eight points this season over five of the last nine games, including two goals in a Jan. 25 win at RPI and one assist in last Saturday’s 4-3 loss at Yale.
