Just two winters ago, Babson goaltender Brad Arvanitis was living out any college hockey player’s dream.
The Holliston, Mass., native was along for an incredible ride as the UMass Minutemen — led by 2019 Hobey Baker Award winner and Colorado Avalanche 2020 Calder Trophy-winning defenseman Cale Makar — were one game away from bringing home a national championship at the Frozen Four in Buffalo.
“Having that experience (at the Division 1 level) was just so humbling,” Arvanitis said of playing in a UMass program that Greg Carvel has led into Hockey East’s upper echelon in just five years. “Those guys are going to be lifelong friends, and I know they’re rooting for me just as much as I’m rooting for them. It was a great time to be there, but continuing into last year I was just trying to be better going into each game.”
After contributing to two program-building seasons in Amherst, Arvanitis wanted a chance to make his own mark on a successful team.
He found that chance at Babson and certainly has made the most of it since moving from the Pioneer Valley to the strong Division 3 school located just over 10 miles from his hometown. The decision to transfer was made in May — months before the 2019-20 academic year and hockey season began.
“Brad has probably had the craziest 23 or 24 months of any college hockey player in the world,” said Babson head coach Jamie Rice (Newton, Mass.), whose team was 18-6-2 and due to host NESCAC foe Wesleyan in its first NCAA tournament game since 2014 before the season was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic last March.
“He left the (UMass) program on a great note, so someone on the outside would look at everything he was doing and say, ‘That must be awesome. That’s really cool.’ He really just wanted the opportunity to play more. … Everybody wants to be in the band, but it’s nice to have a solo every once in a while.”
Although the Beavers graduated a pair of senior goalies — Matt Pompa and Bryan Botcher — from a team that fell to eventual national runner-up Norwich in the New England Hockey Conference semifinal round back in 2019, Arvanitis had to earn his “solo” last season while competing for playing time alongside then-sophomore Aidan Murphy (Walpole, Mass.) and then-freshman Nolan Hildebrand. And compete they did.
Arvanitis won eight of 12 starts during his debut season as a Beaver, ranking second in NCAA Division 3 with a 1.33 goals-against average and .954 save percentage. He split the team’s 26 games almost exactly evenly with Murphy, a Dexter Southfield product who won 10 times and was fourth nationally in the same aforementioned categories.
Last winter was an opportunity that Arvanitis had long been waiting for after appearing in just four games at UMass.
“I think I was more prepared because the game is faster when you’re playing with the top-tier kids, guys who are in the NHL now,” said Arvanitis, a 2019-20 third-team East All-American, New England Hockey Writers All-Star and All-NEHC second-team netminder. “You just get better from having guys like (Makar, John Leonard and Mario Ferraro of the San Jose Sharks) shoot on you every day. Coming into Babson, I wanted to do what I know I could do with another great team in front of me.”
The ending to last season’s opportunity was a bittersweet one for Arvanitis, the rest of the Beavers and hockey players everywhere, but the 6-foot-2, 180-pound stopper made the summer a productive one in the weight room and training, helping to carry his success into a 2020-21 season that only a select group of New England schools at the D-3 level were able to make happen.
Upon returning to the ice, Arvanitis won all five of his starts and posted a .927 save percentage as Babson finished this winter’s eight-game regular season with a perfect 8-0-0 record.
“I think our senior class has done a really good job leading and just trying to get the younger guys — even the freshmen from last year who are now sophomores — on the same page, because they have not seen a full season yet,” said Arvanitis, who is eligible to use an additional year of eligibility granted by the NCAA to return to the Beavers next season.
Arvanitis is a part of a senior class that finished the season with a 58-22-8 record and includes center Nick Rosa, the program’s first career 40-goal scorer since 2015. However, six of the team’s top seven scorers during the shortened season were sophomores and juniors.
“I wouldn’t say we’re a young team, but we have a lot of depth, which is tremendously important in college hockey,” Arvanitis added. “Their hard work from the weight room has shown on the ice. I still think the best is yet to come.”
The formal NEHC schedule and championships were canceled this year, but the Beavers competed against league rivals New England College and Castleton and the MASCAC’s Plymouth State as part of the slate that began on Jan. 30 and concluded in March.
Around Christmas of 2020, the coaches of those programs, Norwich, Anna Maria, Skidmore and Albertus Magnus came together to form an alliance to discuss what it would take to get a season off the ground and, eventually, ease the process of scheduling games.
Discussions held over more than a week’s worth of Zoom calls with coaches and athletic trainers turned into a document that was successfully presented to high-ups within each school’s athletic department, detailing COVID testing standards and day-of-game safety protocols including mandatory masking during play.
According to the 17th-year coach, the team’s response has been “inspiring.”
“When we had our first meeting after the school said they were going to try to let us play, I told them we were all in and we’ll do whatever it takes,” Rice said. “Some of these ‘whatevers’ are pretty big. We’re masking in the showers, we ate outside in the parking lot on Feb. 13 in Henniker, New Hampshire. But these guys have just come in every day with a smile on their face and given us a great effort. The attention to detail and the way they have responded, it’s as if it’s 1990 and not this crazy 2020-21 that we’re living in.”
There were no conference or NCAA championships to chase throughout D-3 this winter, so the goal of the Beavers, their New England opponents and other programs throughout the country was simply to get back out on the ice and play.
In addition to Babson and its alliance of local foes, NEHC rival Southern Maine, six Commonwealth Coast Conference, two MASCAC and two NESCAC programs also had taken the ice for game action by March 15.
Even amidst all the protocols, wearing masks and every “whatever” necessary to make the season happen, a sense of normalcy returned for Arvanitis and his teammates.
“Getting to play any game has been just a great task, so we’ve all just come to the rink each day thankful to have a little break from ‘reality’ by getting to play the sport we love,” Arvanitis said. “It’s a privilege to play the game and play for this program. Everyone buys in and does the little things right, and that has made the job easier for us in net.”
The Beavers found themselves right back in the win column, too.
