AMHERST — Greg Carvel learned all about how busy life can get when you’re the coach of a successful team this offseason.
In the weeks and months following UMass’ appearance in the national championship game in April, the requests for Carvel were plentiful. And while he was out being celebrated for the Minutemen’s success, he was just as occupied with making sure UMass could soak up the success for years to come.
“It was the busiest offseason,” Carvel said. “You get asked to do a lot of things because of your success, but then you’re trying to push forward harder than before because of the success. You don’t want to get complacent at all, so that’s been our real focus.”
The first step to rooting out complacency is leaving last year’s results in the past and turning the focus to the upcoming season. That might prove difficult to do in the early weeks of this season as the 2018-19 triumphs are celebrated publicly, but that is the objective for Carvel, his staff and the veteran core that returns for the Minutemen.
In reality, it isn’t much different than the process each team goes through in the offseason. Whether you had a successful season the previous year or a disappointing one, each new season brings hope and optimism. And in UMass’ case, the ability to maintain the level it reached last season that stunned so many people in the college hockey community.
“It’s a little different, but we try to downplay that as much as possible,” senior captain Niko Hildenbrand said. “It’s one of those things that’s been harped on time after time, it’s a new season, it doesn’t matter what happened last year. Sure, we have a new standard around here – and that’s how it should be – but what happened last year is what happened last year.”
But this offseason was far from ordinary for most of the Minutemen. There wasn’t that typical time for players to recover from the season and then jump into workouts before school ended. So instead of getting into the gym in the final few weeks of the semester, many of the Minutemen had to fall into their normal routines at home before rejoining their teammates in Amherst for workouts in July and August.
Those workouts came with increased expectations for the upcoming season because no one is going to overlook the national runner-up from the previous season. What UMass experienced in the second half of last season will become the norm from the opening faceoff on Oct. 11 against Rensselaer to whenever the season ends for the Minutemen. The hope is the lessons from those games will translate for the new group hoping to continue the momentum off last year.
“We had to adjust to that last year when we had a higher ranking, we had teams giving us their best game,” junior Jake Gaudet said. “We’re just going to carry on from last year and make sure we’re doing the same things we did in the second half of last year and continue to win games. That’s how we’re going to start off this year, we’re not going to let anybody sneak up on us this season.”
Hildenbrand said the freshmen have transitioned into the UMass culture as smoothly as any class in his four years in the program. He credited that quick adjustment to the number of veteran players in the locker room now that the transformational freshman class of two years ago are now juniors and more comfortable with their voices. Now the freshmen have plenty of people there to help them acclimate into the locker room and keep their focus on the ice.
However, Carvel is still a bit cautious about the upcoming season. It’s easy for players and coaches to talk about not settling on their laurels and continuing to push for success, but it’s another thing for those positive signs to translate into victories on the ice. Yet that is the exact challenge he is eagerly awaiting to tackle this year.
“I’ve never been as excited for a season but also as nervous as I am for this season,” Carvel said. “I’m scared to death of any complacency in the program, but I’m also excited for the challenge of maintaining the program where we did last year without a superstar in the lineup, which we’re fully capable of. We’re deeper than we were before, we’ll get more scoring from deeper down our lineup, our defensemen will continue to be young and our goaltending should be stable. We’re way deeper than we’ve ever been and we’ve got experience to go along with that.”