Throughout his 11-year career as UMass Lowell’s head coach, Norm Bazin has constantly preached playing a hard-nosed, “Lowell Style” of hockey.
The River Hawks strive to be hard to play against from the goaltender out, playing a true team game that features contributions to the scoresheet up and down the lineup.
That has still held true throughout a 4-0-1 run to conclude the opening month of October, but Andre Lee is certainly capable of being one catalyst for the team to build around throughout his junior season.
Throughout his 11-year career as UMass Lowell’s head coach, Norm Bazin has constantly preached playing a hard-nosed, “Lowell Style” of hockey.
The River Hawks strive to be hard to play against from the goaltender out, playing a true team game that features contributions to the scoresheet up and down the lineup.
That has still held true throughout a 4-0-1 run to conclude the opening month of October, but Andre Lee is certainly capable of being one catalyst for the team to build around throughout his junior season.
After finishing the shortened 2020-21 season with a team-leading 16 points following their late-season surge that ended with a loss in the Hockey East title game against eventual national champion Massachusetts, Lee enjoyed his biggest breakthrough of this young year with a two-goal, one-assist performance in Friday’s 3-0 win at Boston University.
Lee’s offensive talents have shined since the start of his college career, but Bazin has seen the powerful winger’s all-around game come around as an upperclassman.
“Andre is certainly developing,” Bazin said. “When you can start developing your penalty kill skills and help the team out with a few blocked shots, he’s turning into a complete player. That’s a big piece of the puzzle for him.”
Fellow Swede classmate Carl Berglund -- who underwent knee surgery after being sidelined for the remainder of last season in February -- and senior assistant captain Reid Stefanson have teamed up with Lee to form a line that plays well off each other and has been effective through the first six games.
“Those guys are smart players and make smart plays, and we like to have fun in the offensive zone,” said Lee, a seventh-round pick of Los Angeles in 2019 and one of two Kings prospects on the Lowell roster. (Sophomore defenseman Ben Meehan, a Walpole, Mass., native and Dexter Southfield product who scored his first collegiate goal on Saturday, is the other.)
“I just try to create space as much as I can and use my shot. They’re great, I’ve liked playing with them. We get open for each other, we block shots for each other. That’s how we like to be. We’re a team with a lot of heart.”
Berglund’s return to full health has been a major boost to Lee’s game and a Lowell team that split its first series at Arizona State before a 1-0-1 last weekend against Michigan State that included senior Owen Savory’s first of back-to-back shutouts. The Rensselaer transfer and his River Hawk defense were less than two minutes away from pitching a third straight, but BU got on the board in the eventual 2-1 contest.
This season, according to Bazin, has marked a “coming of age” for Lee and his linemates. With Stefanson capping off the scoring late in the second period, the trio combined for all three goals in Friday’s game.
“Over the three years, I’ve developed my shot, and I think that’s my biggest power -- just trying to pick a spot and staying with it through a game,” Lee said. “But, you have to do everything you can for the team to win. From my freshman year to now, I’ve worked a lot in practice to develop as a player and make smarter plays.”
“I thought Stefanson was particularly impressive (on Friday) on faceoffs and Andre capitalized,” said Bazin, whose team hasn’t lost since the Oct. 2 season opener and plays just once this week on Wednesday night against LIU. “When you get contributions from all three of them, it’s certainly a bonus. It’s impressive to watch them when they’re on.”
Crimson start fast
In 601 days without game action, Harvard must have been saving up the goals.
Boasting a lineup that includes seven NHL draft picks among freshman and sophomore classes that are debuting in college hockey, the Crimson started its season in impressive fashion, blitzing Dartmouth and Bentley with 16 combined goals in a pair of victories.
Junior defenseman Henry Thrun (Southborough, Mass.) started the year with a team-best eight points, becoming the first Crimson player since 2002 to record a five-assist game in Saturday’s 7-3 win over Bentley. Junior Nick Abruzzese dished out four helpers and sophomore Sean Farrell (Hopkinton, Mass.) had two goals and two assists to match freshman Matthew Coronato’s performance in the previous night’s season-opening, 9-3 win at Dartmouth.
The talented newcomers joining five of the top-10 scorers returning from the 2019-20 season including Abruzzese and senior Casey Dornbach should make for an incredibly fun team to watch in Cambridge, where Farrell and Coronato have reunited on the same line after dominating the USHL with the Chicago Steel.
“Between the (John) Farinacci-Farrell-Coronato line, I thought they were on pucks and turned pucks over,” 18th-year coach Ted Donato said on Saturday. “There’s a lot of speed, a lot of skill, but they compete and win second effort pucks. That’s a really important line for us. Guys like Abruzzese and Dornbach have proven to be really good, and with (sophomore Alex) Laferriere, we feel like we’ve got two lines at the top that can really get up and down ice and make plays.”
It seems as though a power play that ranked first or second nationally in each of Harvard’s last two seasons will be able to hit the right notes again after finishing 5 for 11 across the opening weekend.
“We want that to be a little bit of a recipe for us that we’re going to play fast, make teams play up-tempo and hopefully they have to take penalties at times to stop us,” Donato said. “If we do, then we can be pretty dangerous.”
Close calls
All five of the Hockey East league games played on Saturday night were decided by one goal, with victories for Massachusetts (against Merrimack) and New Hampshire (against Providence) coming in 3 on 3 overtime.
UMass swept the home-and-home series, 5-4 and 2-1, with a pair of dramatic finishes as rookie defenseman Scott Morrow’s (Darien, Conn.) winner on the power play followed senior Colin Felix’s strike with 4.7 seconds remaining on the previous night. Northeastern and UMass Lowell also picked up Hockey East sweeps.
Also on Friday, Vermont earned the first win over a ranked opponent under second-year head coach Todd Woodcroft, as UMass transfer Philip Lagunov’s second goal of the game came three minutes into the extra frame and allowed the Catamounts to overcome a three-goal deficit and earn a 5-4 win over Boston College.
UNH managed its split thanks to senior Jackson Pierson’s first goal of the season with 19.5 ticks left on Saturday. The trend wasn’t limited to Hockey East, however, as both games of the non-conference series between American International and Quinnipiac ended in overtime, and Sacred Heart held a 2-1 lead before scoring an empty-netter off the stick of junior Braeden Tuck -- who had a goal and two assists -- to earn Saturday’s Atlantic Hockey win over Niagara.
Three more stars
Hockey East - Justin Hryckowian, Northeastern
The Quebec native rookie, who spent a year of prep hockey at Salisbury, scored his first two collegiate goals during Northeastern’s three-game week. He logged a power-play goal and an assist during last Tuesday’s game against UConn before starting the team’s three-goal comeback with a second-period strike on Saturday.
Hryckowian has also been a responsible center in the early going for the Huskies, ranking fifth in Hockey East and first among freshmen with 83 faceoff wins and a 65.4 percent rate.
ECAC - Luke Kania, Brown
As a rare fifth-year graduate student returning to an Ivy League club, Kania provides a crucial veteran presence and experience to a team that integrated freshmen and sophomores into the lineup for Saturday’s season-opening, 2-0 shutout of rival Yale in Providence.
Kania, who played in only four games during the shortened 2019-20 season due to injury. pitched the third shutout of his 42-game collegiate career by making 32 saves, 15 of which came in the second period. He also backstopped a Bears penalty kill that was a perfect 8 for 8 on the night.
Atlantic - Jake Kucharski & Alec Calvaruso, American International
Sticking in net, the Yellow Jacket goaltending tandem was outstanding during a two-game weekend with Quinnipiac in which their team forced overtime on back-to-back nights. Kucharski made 33 saves in the series-opening, 2-2 tie, including at least 10 in all three regulation periods on the way to his third 30-save effort of the year and second in as many weeks.
Calvaruso was exceptional during his first start as a Yellow Jacket on Saturday, stopping 43 shots in a 2-1 overtime loss. A Rensselaer transfer like the aforementioned Savory, he allowed a goal at 13:25 of the first period before making 37 consecutive saves until the overtime winner.
This weekend's hat trick
1. Hockey East showdown: The top team in the Hockey East standings meets the defending champion in a home-and-home set beginning Friday in Amherst, Mass. Providence will look to shake off Saturday’s series-ending overtime loss to New Hampshire when it takes on a UMass team that was given all it could handle twice against Merrimack.
2. Rivalry night: Friday’s first full slate of six ECAC games will be highlighted by Harvard and Cornell renewing acquaintances for the first time since January of 2020. Cornell was on a 10-game unbeaten streak when the teams last met at Bright-Landry Hockey Center on Dec. 6, 2019, and it ranked atop the national polls when its national title hopes were shattered in the pandemic-shortened season.
3. Sojourn to South Bend: While three Atlantic Hockey clubs are set for conference action (including Bentley and American International at home), Holy Cross takes a trip out to Notre Dame for a Thursday-Friday series. BU is also heading west as it looks to curb its recent slide outside of Hockey East play at Northern Michigan.
