AMHERST
Welcome to life after Cale Makar, UMass fans.
What you witnessed last season was a historic run that will be etched in your minds forever. To have expected this year’s team to do the same was unrealistic, which I know many of you realized. This wasn’t about replicating the 2018-19 season, it was about maintaining that level. But that is real hard to do when you don’t have a guy like Makar or Mario Ferraro on the ice.
What most people don’t remember or choose to overlook is that Ferraro and Makar hid many of UMass’ deficiencies from sight. Last year’s team was reliant heavily on four forwards to score most of the goals while being among the nation’s best in scoring from defensemen. Last season, coach Greg Carvel continued to shuffle his bottom six until right around this time of the season when he settled on his 12 forwards and rode the lines into the national title game.
Those are some of the same problems UMass is facing this season, except there is no Makar to take over a game with one end-to-end rush. There is no singular player who can impose his will at a moment’s notice and propel UMass to victory the way Makar did last season. And that is not a bad thing, it is not an indictment on this year’s squad that there isn’t that player on the roster.
The lack of a true superstar makes this three-game run of 0-2-1 so valuable to this year’s squad. This is the first time in a while that this group of players has had to deal with an extended streak of negative results, and it will ultimately show us what type of program UMass can become in the future. There is no reason to believe that the Minutemen will sink back to the bottom of Hockey East under Carvel, but this is a chance for the world to see if UMass can be perennial contenders.
For most of this season, UMass has not been an elite team. The Minutemen have beaten the teams they should have beaten and have been competitive against teams currently ranked in the USCHO poll. The difference is right now the Minutemen are lacking the consistency to win those games against equal or better competition. That isn’t something that one player can fix, it’s going to take a whole team effort to get back on track.
Which is what makes February such a crucial month for UMass. Over the next three weekends, the Minutemen play home-and-home series with two ranked teams, sandwiched around an off week. Those games will go a long way to deciding UMass’ placement in the Hockey East standings and Pairwise, but also tell us where this team is mentally right now.
Toward the end of Friday’s loss to Boston College, we saw the emotions spill over onto the ice whether it be hanging heads on the bench or the senseless roughing penalty John Leonard took with three minutes left. After the game, Carvel laid out the plan moving forward.
“Not allowing ourselves to get frustrated is the most important thing,” Carvel said. “Just to continue attacking the game, follow the game plan, execute, compete, have a good attitude. That’s all we can ask and that’s all we’re going to do is to reset to that and double down on that. It’s been effective for us for two and a half years and we’re having a short stretch here where maybe we’re a little frustrated, but I’m not going to tell them this week anything they haven’t already heard.”
We’ll see now how this young team will react to the challenge being laid before it. Last year, the Minutemen had Ferraro and Makar to cover up 10 minutes of poor play, but that safety net is gone this season and UMass has not reacted well to it. The talent is there to be a threat in Hockey East this season, but will the mindset and consistency be there against the better teams?
Josh Walfish can be reached at jwalfish@gazettenet.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshWalfishDHG. Get UMass coverage delivered in your Facebook news feed at www.facebook.com/GazetteUMassCoverage.