The Massachusetts men’s club hockey team won an important game against No. 1 Connecticut College 3-2 in overtime. The Camels (18-2) came into the game on a 15-game win streak and have been the best team in the Northeast Region this season. The Minutemen (14-10) were on a similar streak of five games unbeaten and continued their streak with the win at the Mini Mullins Center.
With under two minutes left in the overtime period, Tommy Hayes carried the puck in the offensive zone on the right side of the ice. He cut to the inside and dropped the puck to Thomas Milne, who cut to the outside before breaking back towards the net. Milne got past his defensemen and ripped the game-winning goal past Connecticut College goalie Ryan Rosenau.
This was not Hayes’ only involvement in the game, as he came away with the game-tying goal halfway into the third period. UMass was on the power play when the puck fell directly to the stick of Hayes, who buried it to tie the game at two.
Hayes went the first 16 games of his career scoreless but scored his first goal in UMass’ previous game against RPI and had two crucial points to give his team victory in this game.
“[Hayes] has been huge, and I feel like a lot of guys are finding a game right now,” said head coach Sean Prendergast. “It seems to come in waves, if a guy is going, you feed him ice.”
The other UMass goal was scored similarly, a rebound on the power play. This time, the goal was scored by Nick Salvatore on the backhand. He was moving away from the goal as he shot it before Rosenau could get up after making the previous save from his stomach.
The power play was an area of interest in the game as the Minutemen had seven of them. The first three-man advantages of the game were a struggle for UMass, on those power plays they were outshot 4-3 despite being up a man. On the fourth power play of the game, it finally broke onto the score sheet with the Salvatore goal.
“Still work in progress for us,” Prendergast said. “Every team kind of plays the power play differently, whether it’s aggressive kill, more of like clog the middle kind of kill, they were aggressive and it just took us a little bit too long to adjust. Once we did, we were able to capitalize.”
The Camels have outshot most of their opponents this season and continued that trend in this game, outshooting UMass 39-23. It was Minutemen goalie Ryan Dailida who came up big, saving 37 of those shots and keeping his team in the game.
Coming into this game, Connecticut College scored an average of 6.52 goals per game and Dailida held them to just two. He made big save after big save, including a robbery of a Camels breakaway chance on the penalty kill, through a spread eagle save that covered the entire lower part of the goal.
“Dailida has been a stud for us all game, actually, all year,” Prendergast said. “He’s been an incredible goalie and he’s earned than that. We’re gonna roll with him, he’s a really special player.”
It was a physical game that saw a total of 11 penalties between the two teams. Connecticut College’s Cole Eichler went to the sin bin four times in the game. UMass, however, was able to mostly stay out of the box despite continuing to play its physical game.
“We like to pride ourselves on playing physical and I feel like sometimes we get away from that,” Prendergast said. “When we play our best hockey, we’re playing physical and winning our puck battle. So, I think that’s what we did tonight.”
This was the penultimate game of the regular season for the Minutemen, who are hoping that this result will push them to the top six in the Northeast and earn them a first-round bye in regionals. The Camels are a top team and great preparation for the upcoming postseason.
“These are the type of teams we want to play to prepare,” said Prendergast. “They’re a really good team, they’re fast, they back, check hard and that’s exactly what we’re going to see postseason play.”
UMass’ next game is at home against Boston College on Saturday, Feb. 8th at 6:30 p.m. With the final rankings being released on Feb. 9, the regional tournament will take place in Simsbury, Connecticut from Feb. 20 to Feb. 23.
Myles Donato can be contacted at [email protected] and followed on X at myles_donato.
