The UMass hockey team will jump on a bus on Thursday and head to Maine for its season opener the next day.
Head coach Greg Carvel is well aware that at any point the Minutemen could pull a U-turn in Stephen King country and head back to Amherst.
“I still am not 100 percent certain we’ll drop the puck on Friday night and that’s just the reality of it,” Carvel said. “We may be halfway there on the bus on Thursday and something may happen.”
The last time UMass was preparing for a game it was March and the start of the Hockey East Tournament was around the corner. Officials canceled the tournament before it started due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Last week, conference officials announced details for the start of the 2020-21 season.
While a conference-only schedule is set with flexibility for postponements, nothing is being taken for granted as the season nears.
“UMass has done a tremendous job as far as testing, about protocols and we’ve been lucky that we’re basically living in a bubble here because there’s very, very few students on campus,” Carvel said. “That’s allowed us to be very successful and working through the virus. We’re ready to play, we’re excited to play. I think the group is very grateful that we’ve been able to practice and prepare as closely as we would in normal times where we know that most people are kind of just treading water and not really growing in life and we’ve been able to come to the rink every day and challenge each other.
“We’ve been grateful to have the opportunity but to be able to play a game is the next step, next level stuff and it’s kind of surreal actually right now thinking that we’ll be on a bus in two days traveling to Maine to play hockey.”
The UMass basketball team was set to open its season next week in Bubbleville, a multi-team event at Mohegan Sun in Connecticut. However, on Tuesday the university announced that the program has paused all activities due to a positive COVID test within Tier 1 personnel, which consists of coaches, student-athletes, team managers and support staff.
On Sunday, Vermont paused basketball and hockey until Dec. 18 due to a rise in the state’s COVID case count. That move resulted in the postponement of UMass’ home hockey series with the Catamounts on Nov. 27-28.
“These are very unprecedented times and everyone has to be really smart,” UMass junior defenseman Marc Del Gaizo said. “Nobody wants to be that guy that shuts the team down and that’s something that we’ve been preaching here pretty much all fall. We’ve been fortunately enough to not have any slip-ups yet, but at the end of the day things like that happen. … Everyone has to be smart, be cognizant of making smart decisions away from the rink.”
Carvel thought his team was in a good place entering its opener. Players returned to campus in September and took part in off-ice development while going through health and safety protocols. On-ice practice started six weeks ago once the team was at full strength.
“I think we’ve been ahead of the curve since Day 1 where we were able to get our team going through proper protocols to get the whole group together on the ice way earlier than other teams,” Carvel said. “I know some other teams in our conference even a couple weeks ago still haven’t practiced as a team where we’ve been practicing for at least a month so I think we’ve been ahead of the curve which has allowed us to get very specific in our training.”
That training hasn’t featured much of Maine. When the Minutemen take the ice they will have spent more time on themselves than the Black Bears, which is by design. Carvel said he spoke with another coach in the conference and the two agreed that they have never been more exhausted at this point in the season.
“Everything we’ve had to juggle and work through, we’re at the point where we are almost not concerned with our opponent,” Carvel said. “Let’s just get there, play hard, play right, let’s not spend as much time as we used to worrying about what they are going to do on a breakout or forecheck, give them enough information so that nothing shocks them, but just show up and play hard. That’s a pretty good policy, maybe a little less coaching this year will be a positive for everybody.”
Mike Moran can be reached at mmoran@gazettenet.com. Follow on Twitter @mikemoranDHG.