The Massachusetts hockey team started its 2016-17 season in sound fashion with a 3-0 shutout victory over Colorado College Friday night at the Mullins Center.

UMass (1-0-0) freshman goaltender Ryan Wischow got the start in the season opener and had an impressive first outing, as he turned aside every one of the Tigers’ 31 shots he faced to earn his first career shutout

“He looked pretty damn good,” Minutemen coach Greg Carvel said after the game. “He was really good tonight. I was hoping he was a gamer, he proved he was tonight.”

Wischow kept the Tigers (0-1-0) at bay with some notable saves throughout the game, including stopping all nine of the Colorado College power play opportunities.

“It was a lot of fun,” Wischow said about how he felt playing in the first game of the season. “Obviously it’s something you dream about as a kid, and tonight I got an opportunity to put on the jersey and represent the school and the boys played well in front of me.”

Wischow looked confident from the start, and he credited his confidence to a pre-game blunder in warmups.

“I actually got rid of my butterflies when I [tripped] going out on the ice for the start of warmups,” Wischow said. “Not exactly how I envisioned my career starting but, after that I was like well it can’t really get any worse than this.”

Wischow added: “It’s always good to get a few shots early, especially some easy ones [to] build some confidence, put some pucks in the corner and make some nice saves. The more shots you see as the game goes on the better you feel.”

As the game continued on, and Wischow continued to be lights out in the crease, it was evident that the rest of the UMass team was taking notice of their goalie’s solid play.

“I kept coming up to him between periods telling him to keep playing the way he did,” assistant captain Dominic Trento said. “I thought he bailed us out in the first period, made a lot of big saves.”

Wischow finished with 12 saves in the first period, while adding an additional 14 in the game’s final 20 minutes.

“I liked the way we played tonight,” Carvel said summing up his team’s performance. “I thought when the game was five-on-five for stretches, we were the better team five-on-five.

Wischow and the Minutemen return to the Mullins Center Saturday night to wrap up the two-game set with CC.

Ryan Ames can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @_RyanAmes.