The No. 14 Massachusetts hockey team kicked off the Hockey East Tournament with a 2-1 defeat of bottom-seeded Vermont at the Mullins Center on Wednesday night. After all three goals came in the first period, the Minutemen (20-12-5, 10-9-5 HEA) and Catamounts (11-21-3, 6-16-2 HEA) played to a stalemate for the final 40 minutes, giving UMass a berth into the quarterfinals.
Trailing 2-1 with just over a minute left in the game, UVM pulled goaltender Keenan Rancier to bring on the extra skater to try to score and extend its season. The Minutemen stuck to their rigid structure in the defensive zone and blocked four shots, two in a row from Kenny Connors. After the second blocked shot, Connors trickled the puck out to center ice to seal the victory for UMass.
“Very much a playoff style game,” head coach Greg Carvel said. “Found a way to score two goals and then it really… felt like an unusual game, just because there wasn’t a lot of offense either way. We usually create a little more excitement around the net, we didn’t tonight, so it felt off, but we didn’t give up a lot. I think after two periods they only had four or five scoring chances.”
Playing all six healthy defensemen with Lucas Ölvestad out with a hand injury, the UMass backend was strong and structured all night.
“[Ölvestad] brings energy to our team, he’s a leader, he’s very vocal and not having him, [we] missed him,” Carvel said. “We let up one goal, didn’t let up a lot of scoring chances, so all six of those guys did a good job.”
Alternate Captains Lucas Mercuri and Ryan Lautenbach provided all of the scoring for the Minutemen, both finding the back of the net in the first period.
Outside of the two goals, the Catamounts played an impressively stymieing game defensively, limiting UMass to just 21 shots on goal and very few quality scoring chances.
“I thought they did a really good job, they really limited us, did a good job shutting our cycle down,” Carvel said. “I thought we would do more tonight on entries and the cycle, but we did score one on the cycle. Just felt unusual because we’ll usually create 20 scoring chances a game and we might have had 10 tonight.”
The UMass student section at the Mullins Center was thumping all night, especially in the third period, giving the Minutemen boosts of momentum on the ice.
“We work really hard, every [player] and [staff member],” Mercuri said. “For students to come out and support it means everything. It was awesome having them behind our backs.”
The Minuteman win eliminates the Catamounts from the HEA Tournament and ends their season early. The win sends UMass to the quarterfinals where it will take on Boston University for the third time this season. The Minutemen split the season series with the Terriers, but the win came in the form of a 4-0 shutout at Agganis Arena in Boston back in December.
“We love to go on the road and be road dogs, that’ll be a good matchup,” Mercuri said. “They’re a good team, we’re a good team, it’ll be a good game.”
UMass goaltender Michael Hrabal was especially exceptional against the Terriers, posting the first shutout over the Terriers in UMass history in that resounding win. The Minutemen are 3-0 in the city of Boston this season, and Hrabal has pitched two shutouts in those games, posting a .982 save percentage in Beantown.
The Minutemen will ship up to Boston on Saturday, March 15. Puck drop at Agganis Arena is slated for 4:30 p.m.
“It’s been a great year, the team has continually gone in the right direction,” Carvel said. “May not have been happy with the first part of our year, but we never went backwards, we went forwards.”
Matt Skillings can be reached at [email protected] and followed on X @matt_skillings.
