AMHERST — The most important part about Saturday night was that UMass left the Mullins Center with two points. How the Minutemen found a way to fend off Connecticut was a close second.
UMass was already short on healthy players entering the contest and dressed all 19 skaters who were still physically able to play. Midway through the first period, George Mika left the ice with a knee injury that will likely sideline him for awhile. So Greg Carvel went down to three lines for the second night in a row with his trustworthy top-eight forwards joined by sophomore defenseman Kolby Vegara.
Saturday’s 4-3 win might have been “smoke and mirrors” as Carvel described it, but it was at the same time a statement by the eighth-ranked Minutemen, who secured home ice for the Hockey East quarterfinals with the victory.
“I don’t think the people in the stands would understand how big of a character win that was,” Carvel said. “We’re a really depleted team, we used nine forwards – actually we used eight forwards and one defenseman. … That was a character win, UConn’s one of the hottest teams in the country, they outplayed us (Friday) and we needed these two points.”
The key to success was a player who had dressed just twice prior to Friday night’s loss in Connecticut. Vegara, who was the team’s seventh defenseman for the season opener against RPI then again for the first game at Denver, was listed pregame Saturday as the starting right winger on the fourth line. After Mika’s injury, he jumped up to the third line where he stayed for the rest of the game.
Vegara earned the Minutemen’s hard hat award in the locker room postgame for his physical play against the Huskies. The Malden native didn’t do anything to influence the goals for UMass (20-11-2, 13-8-2 Hockey East), but he gave Carvel a ninth trustworthy option on the front end to allow him to play three lines with confidence instead of worrying about a freshman forward potentially making a game-changing mistake.
“Kolby’s been here for two years, he’s a committed kid and he’s a defenseman, so it’s tough for him to break in the lineup with our defense,” Carvel said. “Maybe he’s a forward now because he made big hits, he knows what to do, he doesn’t go out and try to do anything he’s not supposed to. He played 10, 12 shifts and on almost every shift, he gave us something positive.”
The lack of bodies put a lot of pressure on UMass’ stars to produce and the Minutemen’s best players rose to the occasion. Marc Del Gaizo, who Carvel called UMass’ worst defenseman in Friday’s loss, scored the Minutemen’s first two goals to double his season total and added an assist on Bobby Trivigno’s tiebreaker midway through the third period.
Del Gaizo said the defensemen knew they had to carry more of the load with UMass short on forwards, and Trivigno said the forwards knew the margin for error was thin with how many minutes they would have to play in the game.
“Our mindset is that every play matters,” Trivigno said. “When you only have nine guys going, you’ve got to make the most of your time on the ice. You’ve got to make smart plays, you can’t have any costly turnovers, we didn’t have a lot of guys playing so we needed to make the most of it.”
Trivigno was the only member of his line without multiple points in the victory despite the offensive dominance from the trio of Trivigno, Niko Hildenbrand and John Leonard. The trio was on the ice for all three of UMass’ even-strength tallies and both Trivigno and Leonard were instrumental in Del Gaizo’s power-play tally.
Hildenbrand finished with two assists while Leonard scored his 10th career game-winning goal to set a new school Division I record with 27 goals on the season. Leonard, an Amherst native, also added three assists – much to Carvel’s surprise – to extend his six-game point streak, during which he has 10 goals and five assists.
“I don’t know, it just kind of clicks,” Trivigno said. “We have really good chemistry and our play styles kind of match up. Niko is a very hard-nosed player who always plays the game the right way, so he’s always in the right spot and then Leno is a tremendous scorer. We win the battles for him and let Leno put the puck in the back of the net.”
UMass showed some fatigue late in the game after Leonard scored to put the Minutemen up 4-2 with 3 minutes, 19 seconds left. UConn (15-14-4, 12-9-2) scored just 13 seconds after to make it a one-goal game then continued to threaten in the final minute after prying the puck away from UMass, which had pinned the Huskies in their defensive zone. The Minutemen continued to sprawl all over the ice to block shots and passing lanes, and were aided by some timely goaltending by Matt Murray as well to preserve the victory.
The victory moved UMass back into second place heading into the final weekend of the regular season. The Minutemen can seal second place with a win Thursday at home against Vermont or a tie between UConn and UMass-Lowell on Friday.
The body count, though, might not be any better against the Catamounts. Carvel said he is hopeful junior forward Mitchell Chaffee will be ready to go, but was unsure about a timeline on Jeremy Davidson, who left Friday’s loss to UConn with an undisclosed injury.
“We’ve got to get some bodies back because obviously you can’t do this every night,” Carvel said.