When Greg Carvel was hired to be the head coach of the Massachusetts hockey team in 2016, he was given a seemingly impossible task: save a sinking ship from its ultimate demise. 

Stuck floating in a sea of mediocrity, Carvel arrived in Amherst with a plan to rebuild the program from the ground up and establish something that had sparsely existed in the history of UMass hockey: a winning culture.

Tied intricately into that culture was an emphasis on building a versatile defensive unit, one that effectively balanced responsible team defense with the ability to contribute offensively.

Nobody embodied that sentiment better than Cale Makar.

Makar went from a college standout at UMass to a Stanley Cup champion and a winner of the Conn Smythe, Norris and Calder trophies in just six seasons in the National Hockey League. 

Though his time as a Minuteman lasted just two years, the effects of a player of his caliber reverberated throughout the program and has helped the team recruit top defensive talent each year since his departure. 

It wasn’t just the fact that Makar came to UMass, though, that made Amherst the place to be for up-and-coming defensemen; it was how he grew there, as both a player and a person. Instead of signing with the Colorado Avalanche after his first season, which the franchise wanted, Makar and Carvel both agreed that he needed to develop more at the college level before making the jump to the NHL.

Makar worked on increasing his stamina and being able to play for a full 60 minutes every night, which led him to be named as the first Hobey Baker Award winner in UMass history.

“We’re really lucky that Cale came [to UMass], first and foremost. When you see a player of that caliber trust in [Carvel] and trust in what this program has to offer, that’s the number one [reason to come] for a lot of guys,” junior defenseman Owen Murray said. “But after that, you just consistently see a guy here, a guy there, every year produce at a top level, and often you see a group of defensemen here where they end up leading a team to a really good record and sometimes championships.”

When Carvel and his staff recruit players there are three things they look for: skating, hockey IQ and compete level. While his on-ice focus is directed towards coaching his defensemen based on their individual skills – the skating and hockey IQ – his off-ice mentorship is focused on that third trait: competition level. 

“More of it is off the ice what you’re teaching them,” Carvel said. “You’re teaching them mental toughness, you’re teaching them routines, teaching them discipline, what commitment really means.”

The offensive aspect of the game fleshes itself out as players gain more confidence in their skills through trial and error in practices and games. The mental make-up of the defensemen grows as Carvel instills his knowledge and expertise of the value having a strong mental fortitude on his players. 

Carvel has helped generate this growth in dozens of players in his nine seasons with the Minutemen. As of this year, 15 defensemen he coached at UMass are playing professional hockey.

Carvel makes it his mission to get them there.

The luxury of having smooth-skating offensive defensemen is what pushed most of Carvel’s UMass teams from good to great. In the 2024-25 season, it’s been the development of Francesco Dell’Elce and Larry Keenan as elite back-end producers that have proven essential to the success of the team. 

Both Dell’Elce and Keenan logged over 30 minutes of ice-time in a playoff loss against Boston University on March 15. This is a huge show of trust from Carvel after he split them up at the beginning of the season to mitigate their rookie mistakes.

While Dell’Elce has lit up the scoresheet, it’s been Keenan who has garnered the most defensive praise from Carvel.

“I think [Keenan] sums a lot up [in what I look for],” Carvel said. “He’s got size, he’s got great mobility, he can add to your offense, he plays with an edge. To me, he’s kind of like the whole package; really mobile, good puck skills.”

Before Dell’Elce and Keenan’s emergence, UMass benefited from the play of Ryan Ufko and Scott Morrow from 2021-2024. While both came to Amherst as highly skilled players, they each had their own bridge to cross to reach true pro status. 

Morrow needed to learn the defensive side of his game, which came with mental growth that Carvel taught in him and learning to balance his offensive prowess with more responsible play in the defensive zone. For Ufko, it was learning to play the most well-rounded game he could as an undersized player. Carvel gave him room to go through trial and error to figure out what worked best for him, knowing that Ufko could make up for his own mistakes.

Before Ufko and Morrow’s time, there was the Zac Jones, Marc Del Gaizo and Matt Kessel era.

Jones came to UMass as an offensive specialist. In the summer before his freshman season, he wasn’t invited to the United States World Junior camp. By the time the World Junior Tournament rolled around in late December, the work Carvel did with him in just half a season at UMass earned Jones a spot on the roster as one of the best under-20 hockey players in the United States.

In a short period of time, Carvel taught Jones how to be effective defensively, not just offensively.

Before Jones, Del Gaizo and Kessel, there was Makar and Mario Ferraro.

Six of those seven names are currently on NHL rosters, with the exception being Ufko who is succeeding in his first pro season with the American Hockey League’s Milwaukee Admirals.

Excluding this season’s team, every Carvel-led UMass team has had at least one defenseman go on to play in the NHL.

“That’s the strength of our program is that we do develop kids pretty quickly,” Carvel said on the “Morning Cuppa Hockey” podcast with Jonny Lazarus and Colby Cohen. “A lot of these defensemen were high-end offensive players in [junior hockey,] and what we do is really round their game out pretty well.”

Carvel’s success with developing defensemen doesn’t just end with those who make their way to the NHL. For those who don’t have NHL potential, Carvel’s philosophy on defending has led nine players to successful AHL and ECHL careers.

Colin Felix, who played in Amherst from 2018 to 2022, was never an offensive-defenseman by trade, instead bringing a skillset that featured physicality and defensive responsibility. He wasn’t a draft pick or a highly touted prospect, but he followed the program that Carvel ingrained into UMass hockey and became a leader both on and off the ice. 

Felix was named an alternate captain as an upperclassman. That leadership, instilled in him by Carvel, has translated into a successful minor-league career, playing in 167 games over three seasons between the AHL and ECHL.

Current players – captain Linden Alger and junior Owen Murray – have followed this trend of coming into college without the high expectations that surround players who have been drafted.

Alger has a lot of similarities to Felix’s journey at UMass, coming in as an under-the-radar defensive-defenseman. Injuries and inconsistent play held Alger back in his first three seasons, but in his senior and graduate seasons, he has become the voice of the locker room and a reliable penalty-killer.

“[Carvel] really focuses on the little details of the game, not always the most fun things to work on but he coaches you the importance of how to play without the puck and that’s a big thing,” Alger said.

Murray, though, came into his freshman year with an offensive upside and above-average skating that made him an attractive asset, though he wasn’t on any pro hockey team’s radar.

Despite his offensive prowess, he struggled early on. In his freshman year, he played in 21 games, had just three points and was minus-12.

“I know [Carvel] would be the first to say it and I would be the first to say it, when I got here I wasn’t ready to play, [I] didn’t have the defensive side of the game down,” Murray said.

Because of this, Murray’s defensive aggression often came back to bite him. He struggled with letting the play come to him and would too often get caught out of position looking to get ahead of the play,giving attackers easier zone entry opportunities.

“Day in and day out, the best part about it is you always have role models to watch: Ufko, Morrow, Aaron Bohlinger, all guys that are talented defensemen, just seeing their habits day in and day out and how they use their feet to their advantage, just learning to let the game come to you,” Murray said. “That’s kind of the biggest thing I’ve learned over my time and I feel like every defenseman has success once they learn that here… learning to hone all that in is the best thing you learn under [Carvel].”

Murray blossomed into a top-four defenseman this season playing with Lucas Ölvestad. Those offensive skills he came into UMass with have expanded, and his defensive game is light years ahead of where it was just two years ago. Carvel has worked with him on reigning his aggression in and channeling it towards keeping defensive plays in front of him. He’s learned to let the attacker come toward him before pouncing, then exploding up the ice after defensive takeaways.

Before he entered the college coaching landscape at his alma mater St. Lawrence, Carvel spent 11 seasons in the NHL, six as an assistant coach with the Ottawa Senators and five with the Anaheim Ducks, where he was promoted from scouting coordinator to assistant coach in his fifth and final season on the west coast. 

This experience at the highest level is what has attracted so many talented players to him at UMass and St. Lawrence, including current assistant coach Nolan Gluchowski, who was recruited by and played under Carvel during his time with the Saints.

“Going to the Stanley Cup Finals with two different organizations in a 10-year period is pretty impressive, you can’t deny that,” Gluchowski said. “I don’t think there are many college coaches that have the same pedigree he does at the professional level and then obviously now at the collegiate level. It’s hard to find somebody as decorated as him.”

Having the unique opportunity to play under him and coach with him, Gluchowski took what Carvel taught him at St. Lawrence and used it to inform his own coaching decisions in lock-step with Carvel.

“The biggest thing that’s always been similar for [Carvel] coaching in college has been the success of the defensemen having a direct correlation to the success of the team,” Gluchowski said. “He encourages a lot of the defensemen to use their feet and their offensive instincts. In my recruiting process that was a huge draw, that was the type of player I was. He asks a lot out of the defensemen, but it’s fair and [he pushes] them and they contribute a lot.”

For Carvel, his passion lies in developing players and helping them reach both their hockey and life goals, setting them up for successful lives whether they’re centered around professional hockey or not.

“I have nightmares about once a month that I took an NHL job and I get to the market and I can’t believe I left UMass, like ‘What were you thinking?’,” Carvel said.  “And I wake up and [say] ‘Thank god, you’re still at UMass.’ …UMass is home. I love every part of it here.”

Carvel’s development of his defensemen this season is a huge reason for the Minutemen’s success down the stretch. He’s taken a young core and turned two freshmen into consistently good defenders. His work with Murray, Alger and Kennedy O’Connor during their time with the team has shaped the Minutemen’s defensive unit into a strong one.

Now it’s time for Carvel and his defensemen to put their work to the test on a national stage, with Minnesota awaiting the team on Thursday.

“I think when you come in here, you think you know how to defend,” Alger said. “But then [Carvel] does a great job of teaching you how to actually defend. He puts a big emphasis on how defense wins games and he really focuses on the little details that you’re not really taught before you get here.”

Matt Skillings can be reached at [email protected] and followed on X @matt_skillings.