Entering this Hockey East season, there was a bit of uncertainty surrounding third-year head coach Greg Carvel’s Massachusetts Minutemen.
Of course, the major question regarding their prospects was whether or not star defenseman Cale Makar would forgo the rest of his collegiate eligibility to begin his professional career with the Colorado Avalanche.
But after helping UMass win 17 games and its first Hockey East postseason series since 2007, and seeing the team’s potential for this year, Makar knew that Amherst would be the best place for him to continue his development from an offensively gifted defenseman — to whom the game came “easy” in the Alberta Junior Hockey League — into more of an all-around force.
“The coaching staff has helped me a lot in terms of developing consistency in my defensive play and being able to lay out my energy all around the ice,” said sophomore Makar, who became the highest draftee in UMass history when the Avalanche selected him with their No. 4 overall pick in 2017. “It’s something I’m still working on, but at the end of the day I think I’m getting better. That’s all you can ask for — just getting better every day.”
Amherst has been the best place for Makar to win, too. The Minutemen team he has helped to steer has done quite a bit of winning this season, advancing to the top of the national polls for the first time ever on two occasions and remaining one of the top three teams in the country every week since Thanksgiving.
But Makar’s return was just one of a number of key factors to the Minutemen — still including eight freshmen and 11 sophomores on the roster after last year’s club brought in the largest rookie class in the country — achieving this season’s historic levels of success.
The Minutemen secured forward Jacob Pritchard as a graduate transfer, adding another veteran presence to the everyday lineup. Pritchard, who hails from Macomb, Mich., earned ECAC All-Rookie honors in 2015-16 as a member of Carvel’s final team as head coach at St. Lawrence.
Another box checked off during the offseason was the addition of goaltender Fille Lindberg, a member of Finland’s gold medal-winning team at the World Junior Championship earlier this year who has formed a great duo with and challenged returning sophomore Matt Murray.
“When those three things happened, we made our focus points for the season on special teams and goaltending,” said Carvel. “Those factors allowed us to elevate our game in both areas, and our two freshman defensemen (Ty Farmer and Marc Del Gaizo) have performed admirably alongside Makar and (Mario) Ferraro.”
Getting contributions from freshmen helps any team achieve its ultimate goals, and has in this case as well, but the building blocks for this season were laid down a year ago when the Minutemen posted the largest year-over-year win turnaround in the country and their best record since winning 18 games in 2009-10.
“We created an identity for our team last year, and that was being a very hard-working team that was difficult to play against, that was creative offensively, and tried to work real hard without the puck,” Carvel said. “There were a lot of nights where we were the better team at 5-on-5, but on special teams we were not. And I thought we got out-goaltended on a lot of nights.”
The Minutemen laid the groundwork during that 17-20-2 (9-13-2 Hockey East) season gone by and have since continued to sprint down the right course. Winning 14 of the first 16 games and each of the first seven league contests this season helped UMass jump into the first-place Hockey East position. It will lead to a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament when the field is announced in mid-March.
The UMass lineup includes each of the top four scorers in Hockey East as Pritchard, Makar and sophomore John Leonard (Amherst, Mass.) were the first trio of Minutemen to reach the 30-point mark in the same season since 2011-12 with six games still to play in the regular season. Fellow second-year forward Mitchell Chaffee rounds out the group that has led the way on an offense that still averages well over 3.5 goals per game.
“I think we added a lot of essential pieces this year to our group, and we have a very special team in that dressing room,” Makar said. “Everybody trusts each other, and I think that’s one of the things that has pulled us through. Regardless of who the coaches put on the ice, everybody knows that we’re going to get the job done. We just have that trust and the ability to know that we’re going to come to the rink every day and push each other to get better.”
Contrary to last season, the power play has been a huge key to the Minutemen’s success and led to the incredible uptick in offensive performance. Last year’s man-up unit clicked at only 15.2 percent, but Pritchard recorded a league-leading 21 of his first 37 points this season on the power play as the club has more than doubled its output to more than 30 percent in those situations.
Playing with great players doesn’t hurt the 6-foot, 193-pound left winger as he reached the 100-point marker for his career in the midst of this season, on Feb. 16 when the Minutemen completed their first-ever season sweep of Boston College.
“I play on the goal line, so whenever I get the puck I essentially see everyone on the ice where I am,” said Pritchard. “I have the option to pass it to ‘Leno’ (John Leonard), ‘Chaf’ (Mitchell Chaffee), Marc (Del Gaizo) or Cale (Makar), so anyone who gets the puck is going to have a pretty good chance of scoring because of how good they are and how well they can finish. And I think we have really good chemistry that’s allowed us to have success.”
This season has been pretty much a dream come true and a full-circle experience for Leonard, whose connection to UMass runs deep. Not only is he an Amherst native and Springfield Cathedral graduate, but his father spent a handful of years as an assistant basketball coach for the Minutemen.
When Leonard was younger, Mullins Center was the place to go. This season has felt like a return to the early-to-mid 2000s when the Minutemen made back-to-back trips to the Hockey East semifinals at the FleetCenter. Leonard and his teammates have played in front of a sold-out Mullins crowd on multiple occasions this year.
“For all my friends, we knew that we were coming here to watch after we played in a game on a Saturday afternoon,” said Leonard, remembering the UMass teams of his childhood. “The place was always packed and loud. It was a really awesome atmosphere, and that’s what we’re building back right now.”
From Carvel’s perspective, he’s a “poster boy” for the program in more ways than one.
He’s the guy everyone in western Massachusetts knows from his dominant high school career during which he tallied 151 points in 72 games, but he, like Makar, has done everything Carvel and his coaching staff have asked over his first two seasons.
The offensive numbers always were there for Leonard, from high school to the United States Hockey League ranks with the Green Bay Gamblers. It was a matter of getting him to trust Carvel’s process and work into becoming a complete player. Mission accomplished.
“When you get really good offensive players, they’re going to have some bad habits, but over the course of his freshman year you could see how much he grew as a player without the puck, which in turn makes you a better player offensively,” Carvel said. “He’s a kid who, maybe, wasn’t a perfect player but he showed the culture, sacrificed and did whatever he had to to make himself better and make the team better. …
“With John being a local, you love to have those kids and you want them to be really successful because it makes everyone around the program excited.”
Makar has excited the UMass faithful from day one, but he’s taken his game to a different level this season. That growth shows in the numbers as it took Makar only 20 games to match the 21 points he recorded as a freshman, but his elite-level skating has routinely allowed him to split two defenders for a breakaway at one end and finish a heavy check at the other more than ever before.
There is an adjustment to college hockey, even for No. 4 overall draft picks. That goal of becoming a two-way force? Another mission accomplished.
“We didn’t have a deep back end last year, and there were a lot of nights he couldn’t sustain his level of play between Friday and Saturday night while we were trying to get 20 to 25 minutes out of him,” said Carvel. “He spent the whole summer here and you can just see how he’s physically maturing and how much ‘hockey strength’ he has on the ice now. He’s knocking kids through walls, he’s a physical presence, and then he’s also the fastest kid on the ice. He’s become a real dominant player.”
Makar’s teammates see it, too. It’s fun for college hockey fans to watch the blueliner’s exploits, but it’s even more fun to play with someone with such talent.
“He can do it all,” Leonard said. “He’s one of the best skaters, if not the best skater, I’ve ever seen in person. He’s really explosive up and down the ice, his lateral movement is as fast as going forward, and he can shoot the puck just as well as anyone.”
When Pritchard approached Carvel about the possibility of joining the Minutemen following his junior campaign at St. Lawrence, it didn’t take long for a decision to be made. It was a hard opportunity for either side to pass up.
Recruiting in college hockey is so much about trust. Pritchard trusts his second-time head coach, and it’s led to a perfect match not once but twice.
“He could have gone to any school in the country, but it was never a process for him,” Carvel said. “It confirms that you get the most out of kids if you treat them right. I think Jacob had a couple rough years at St. Lawrence after I left and he just wanted to relive what he felt his freshman year. I think he really felt like he was allowed to play creatively and had good relationships with the coaching staff, and that’s really the foundation of our success.”
Carvel inherited the 11th-place team in the ECAC during his first season at St. Lawrence in 2011-12 before leading his next four clubs to eighth, fifth, second and fourth-place finishes in the league standings. He left his alma mater having coached four All-Americans, three Hobey Baker Award finalists and eight All-ECAC players.
Fans in Amherst already are seeing the work that Carvel put in in Canton, N.Y., being replicated in Amherst. Pritchard had to be part of it. He felt that if he wanted to make the most of his final collegiate season, there was no better coach than Carvel to help him do it.
And yet again, that mission has been accomplished.
“Coming here has been everything I wanted and more,” Pritchard said. “I really enjoyed my year with Coach Carvel at St. Lawrence. I had a blast playing for him, and I really believe in everything that he preaches. He really has an ability to make his teams play with confidence, play with a purpose and play with a vision. When you have that and have a team focused on that, I believe a team can accomplish anything.”
This year’s Minutemen already have accomplished a lot, but the record book is still open. More boxes are left to be checked off. There is plenty of “anything” still to accomplish.
