After one of the finest starts in the program’s history, with a 9-2-1 record over the first 12 games, a cold streak was all but expected for the Massachusetts hockey team.
That cool-down came in the month of December, where the Minutemen went winless (0-1-3), and began the winter break on a sour note with a 5-3 dismantling at the hands of Harvard. By the end of 2003, the sheen on UMass’ season had worn off, and the long Hockey East schedule ahead loomed a little larger than before.
To make matters worse, the injury bug that had mostly ignored the Minutemen all season finally began to catch up. Greg Mauldin suffered a scary injury after a collision at UMass Lowell on Jan. 3 that sent him to an area hospital. He is expected to return soon, but has not played since the incident. The Mauldin-Stephen Werner combination has also missed its 2002-03 center, Matt Anderson, who has not played a game all season due to a shoulder injury.
Though it was unrelated to injury, Chris Capraro also missed five games before returning to the lineup for Jan. 16’s 3-0 loss at Maine.
It didn’t get much better, at least not right away. While a 3-2 win at UMass Lowell on Oct. 11 gave all the appearances that the Alumni Cup would be headed to Amherst, the River Hawks voiced their opposition in the first series of the new year. Lowell trounced the Minutemen in the two-game set, shutting them out in both games. Chris Davidson made 25 saves in the first game, and Elias Godoy scored twice to lead Lowell past UMass. The next night in Amherst featured a much more even matchup, but Godoy again made the headlines, scoring the only goal Davidson (27 saves) would need with 5:20 to go in the second.
“In the second Lowell game, we played as well as we possibly could,” UMass coach Don Cahoon said.
Mired in an eight-game winless streak, the Minutemen needed a boost, and that boost came with the return of Stephen Werner, fresh off a gold-medal winning trip to Finland with the U.S. National Junior Team in the IIHF World Junior Championships.
Werner scored five goals in the tournament – including two shorthanded goals and a game winner – and then notched two assists in his first game back with the Minutemen, as UMass defeated Boston University at BU’s Walter Brown Arena for the first time in history on Jan. 7.
“At BU, we completely shut them down, and we managed to score a couple of goals as well,” Cahoon said.
Nick Kuiper scored at 9:02 of the first period, and then Craig MacDonald tallied the eventual game-winner on the power play at 14:43 of the second. Gabe Winer made 22 stops in the effort, and Werner earned Hockey East Player of the Week honors for his efforts both abroad and in Boston.
“With Stephen in the lineup in the first Lowell game, it wouldn’t have made a difference,” Cahoon said of the Chevy Chase, Md. native. “In the second game, it might have been the difference. But he’s playing at a heightened level for us now, since the junior tournament he’s raised his level.”
“The biggest factor [in the team’s struggles] is the lineup, which has been completely decimated,” Cahoon said. “We had Greg Mauldin, Stephen Werner, and Chris Capraro out at one time or another, as well as a host of other guys who have been out.”
The Minutemen have also been hurt by a smaller scoring output from defenseman Thomas P
