BUFFALO, N.Y. — In September, Greg Carvel booked his family’s annual vacation to visit his parents in Florida.
He booked the flight for April 13 assuming UMass’ season would be over by then and it aligned with when his children are on spring break. Friday morning, he had to make some changes to that itinerary because he has much bigger commitment for that date.
Carvel will lead the Minutemen (31-9-0) into their first national championship game Saturday against Minnesota Duluth, the reigning champions. But before he turned his attention to the Bulldogs (28-11-2), he had to make sure his family was still going to be able to make its annual trip to Florida.
“It was the happiest $200 per flight charge I’ll ever make,” Carvel said with a smile. “But that’s been the biggest stress in my family. How are we going to get to Florida? I said, ‘We’re going to Buffalo and hopefully stay there.’”
Carvel, though, has much bigger stresses while preparing for Minnesota Duluth, which will be playing in its third consecutive national championship game. He said he assigned most of the early scouting on the Bulldogs to assistants Ben Barr and Jared DeMichiel while he dealt with his various obligations Friday morning before delving into the plan himself Friday night.
Things got complicated Friday with the NCAA announcing forward Bobby Trivigno would be suspended for the national championship for a hit late in the third period Thursday against Denver. The freshman was the third UMass player to receive some type of discipline for a hit to the head during the 4-3 overtime victory over the Pioneers. Junior captain Niko Hildenbrand was given a game misconduct for a hit 6:42 into the game and then Mitchell Chaffee was assessed a game misconduct with about four minutes left in the second period.
The Minutemen strive to be a physical team and have done a good job all season at staying disciplined and playing within the rules. The penalties against Chaffee and Hildenbrand were UMass’ fifth and sixth major penalties of the season and the team’s fourth and fifth game misconducts. Carvel said he can’t ask his players to change that style too much heading into the championship game, especially against an opponent that also plays a heavier, physical brand of hockey.
“We check, it’s hockey, you run into people,” Carvel said. “I guess they unfortunately hit heads first. I honestly haven’t really gone back to dissect them. But that’s our identity. You play hard. I don’t think Duluth is any different. There’s always the line that you can’t hit the guy in the head. I don’t consider ourselves a team that looks for that, but I consider ourselves a team that we want to be a heavy team, we want to be hard, we want the physical part of the game to be a factor that goes in our favor. We won’t change anything except ask the guys to be a little more disciplined in how they go about it.”
There were the inevitable questions about experience for UMass, which is competing in just its second NCAA Tournament and its first Frozen Four, but the Minutemen have proven they belong all year. Along the way to the national title game it defeated a Notre Dame squad that had appeared in the previous two Frozen Fours and a Denver team that won a national title just two seasons ago.
All of them had more experience on the big stage than UMass, yet none of that mattered when the puck was dropped. Sophomore defenseman Cale Makar, who won the Hobey Baker Award on Friday as the nation’s top player, said the inexperience isn’t a disadvantage for the Minutemen as much as each game has become a learning experience to make the program better in the long run.
“It’s something we’ve been growing as a team throughout our entire season experience-wise,” Makar said. “You look at TD Garden (for the Hockey East semifinals), another experience for us. We’re at the point now where everybody understands what’s at stake (and we’re) excited to get things started.”
The Minutemen will also have to deal with some fatigue factor given they not only played the late game Thursday, but it went to overtime and they were only able to spend roughly 11 hours at the hotel before returning to KeyBank Center for practice Friday. The good news for UMass is that there is the day between the games to help recuperate and Saturday’s game won’t start until 8 p.m., given them extra time to rest and recover.
There is also the issue of dealing with the emotions of a thrilling overtime victory in the national semifinal. The last team to win a semifinal in overtime was Yale in 2013, and those Bulldogs went on to win the national championship two nights later. Overall, teams are 11-9 in the national championship game after winning their semifinal in overtime.
“It was a little hard to get to sleep,” forward Jacob Pritchard said. “At the end of the day we came here to win two games, not just one. We have to get over it.”