The No. 20 Massachusetts hockey team picked up a pivotal three points in the Hockey East standings on Friday night at the Mullins Center in a win over Merrimack, with Kenny Connors leading the way offensively.
Connors scored two of the four UMass (14-10-2, 5-7-2 HEA) goals Friday night, and for only the second and third times this season they weren’t the product of an empty net.
Although his overall game has remained consistent throughout the season, Connors has been snake bitten in the goal scoring column, a struggle he hadn’t faced in his first two seasons, in which he had nine and seven goals respectively. His above average wrist shot is one of his biggest assets offensively, but most of his shots this season have seemed to hit the goal posts.
But Friday night, in a huge game for his team, Connors wouldn’t be denied.
After a lackluster first period in which UMass found itself down a goal, the junior shifted the momentum back to the team in white sweaters with a howitzer snipe over Merrimack (10-14-1, 6-8-1 HEA) goaltender Nils Wallström’s left shoulder.
Nearly halfway through the second period, Connors received a pass in the slot from Ryan Lautenbach during a zone entry and evaded a Warrior defender’s stick to give himself a shooting lane. With a lightning-quick release, the puck was in-and-out of the net in the blink of an eye.
In the third period, Connors was the beneficiary of a loose puck in the top of the offensive zone after a Merrimack turnover. He collected the puck, and from an almost identical spot as his first goal, sent another wrister past Wallström to suck the life out of a potential Merrimack comeback by making the score 4-1.
“The first one, I think he was surprised a puck went in for him,” head coach Greg Carvel said. “The second one it looked like ‘there’s the Kenny we know;’ he scored goals like that his first two years. Especially with [Aydar Suniev] out, we need guys to score goals.”
The absence of one of UMass’ top scorer Aydar Suniev was certainly mitigated by Connors’ resurgent goal scoring prowess on Friday night. In a season where the back of the twine had been evading him, he found a way to break through and step up for his team while it’s working through an injury bug.
No one was more happy that he had broken out of his slump than Connors himself.
“Just a relief, a weight lifted off of the shoulders it feels like,” Connors said.
Now on a line with two speedy wingers in Michael Cameron and Lautenbach, Connors is in a prime spot to amp up his effectiveness in scoring goals.
“We want to be more consistent,” Connors said of his line. “[We are] three guys that should be playing with a lot of pace, when we’re working hard, recovering pucks and getting pucks back to the net, it should be helping the whole team with energy.”
If nothing else, Friday night’s game was a confidence booster for Connors, who is now up to 23 points on the season. If that confidence leads to more goals, he is well on his way to eclipse his highest scoring season from two years ago, when he had 26 points.
Connors and the rest of the Minutemen will have a travel day up to Orono, Maine Saturday before taking the ice again on Sunday, Feb. 2 to take on a powerful Maine team in another big HEA matchup. Puck drop is set for 4 p.m. and can be streamed on ESPN+.
Matt Skillings can be reached at [email protected] and followed on X @matt_skillings.