MANCHESTER, N.H. — For half of the season, UMass has had the luxury of watching other teams adapt to a change in rink dimensions.
The Mullins Center has provided a home-ice advantage for the Minutemen, who skated to 17 wins in 18 games in Amherst this season while teams expanded their game to the Olympic-sized rink. UMass’ style of play fits the larger surface at home with the extra space giving it the room to let its speed and skill shine.
The bigger adjustments have come when UMass has hit the road, where it boasts an 11-8 record. But the results don’t tell the full story of how UMass has adjusted to the smaller rinks this season. Coach Greg Carvel said he could see how his players matured from the first time the Minutemen played at Providence in November – a 3-2 win – to how they played there in February – a 3-2 loss.
“The real test was when we went to Providence at the end of the year at a place where when we went there earlier in the year, we were kind of shell-shocked,” Carvel said. “By the end of the game at the end of the year, we played a great game. It showed the growth of the team over the year of playing on the smaller sheet. There was probably a time where it was concern, but it’s not now.”
If UMass is going to win a national title this season, it must do so on the smaller ice surfaces that have given it fits at times. Last Friday’s loss against Boston College in the Hockey East semifinals was another example of how the limited space on the ice affected the Minutemen. UMass tried to stretch the ice with the long passes that have worked most of this year, but many of them were intercepted or altered as the Eagles clogged the neutral zone.
But where it had the biggest impact is on the forecheck that has helped the Minutemen dominate possession time most of the season. Carvel said after the loss to BC that he was disappointed with the fact UMass couldn’t insert its physicality into the game, which he said should be a bigger benefit on the smaller rinks.
“It’s extremely important and it’s something that we’ve been harping on all week,” junior captain Niko Hildenbrand said. “It’s moving pucks north and just advancing zones. That’s really been important for us last week even leading into this week, it’s definitely something we focused on for sure.”
Trying to re-establish that menacing presence has been a point of emphasis for the top-seeded Minutemen (28-9-0) as they prepared for their 3 p.m. matchup Friday with Harvard (19-10-3) in the first round of the NCAA Tournament’s Northeast Regional in Manchester, New Hampshire. The Crimson, an at-large out of the ECAC, are a similarly hard-nosed team that mirrors the aggressiveness the Minutemen bring to a game.
“We know that they’ll come real hard, they’re a strong forechecking team,” Harvard coach Ted Donato said. “I think where we’re our best, you know we possess the puck down low as well. … I think the team that is able to kind of have the most success getting the puck stopped up and being able to play offense in the other team’s zone will probably have the most success.”
The trip to TD Garden last week did inspire a little change in UMass’ game plan for Friday’s game at SNHU Arena. Carvel said he noticed a difference in where the pucks settled in Boston when UMass tried to enter the zone, and has tried to make small tweaks to make sure the pucks funnel into the areas he wants to attack with the forecheck.
He said he’s hoping those changes to how UMass wants to apply pressure in the offensive zone will help revive the toughness that makes the Minutemen hard to play against on a nightly basis.
“What we learned after the game was in our rink with the big ice, you can throw the puck into the corner and it will stay in the corner and you can be physical,” Carvel said. “But in this rink and in Boston, the pucks seem to funnel to the goaltender, so when the goaltender’s playing the puck, it affects your forecheck. We made a little bit of an adjustment on what we want to try to do on getting the puck into the zone and where we want the puck to be so that we can be physical.
“That’s one of our best assets is tenacity on our forecheck, we have a bunch of big-bodied guys who can be physical and that’s a big factor in games when you can be physically intimidating and physically effective.”