Only one game is on the menu this week for the No. 18 UMass hockey team as it’ll travel to West Point, New York for a post-Thanksgiving rumble with Army on Saturday.
The Minutemen will look to secure their fourth straight win against the Black Knights, in a series history that dates back to 1999. UMass holds a 6-1, all-time edge against Army. The Minutemen took last season’s meeting, 3-1, at the Mullins Center.
“I know they’ll play hard and they’ll be excited to play us, I’m sure, and I hope we’re excited to play them,” UMass head coach Greg Carvel said.
The Minutemen’s most recent result was a 5-1 loss to ranked-Providence at Mullins last Saturday, a game in which UMass allowed four unanswered goals in the third period.
During Carvel’s weekly Zoom with the media this past Tuesday, the 10th-year bench boss repeatedly expressed frustration with his team’s compete level, or lack thereof, to be precise.
“We don’t compete very hard,” Carvel said. “I’ve come to that realization. I think I’ve tried to put my finger on other things, we don’t compete very hard, so that’s up to me to make sure that turns around.”
In doing so, the former St. Lawrence skipper suggested a potential return to the Minutemen lineup for their showdown with the Black Knights, this weekend.
“We need to get a goalie back and have him be at a .940 save percentage, which is what he was supposed to do this year,” Carvel said. “Now he’s going to come back having not played for a month and it’s tough to be on top of your game.
“Not to take anything away from Jackson [Irving], but he’s not supposed to play six games in a row, he’s just not supposed to,” Carvel continued. “But he did a good job, he did his part, I’ll tell you that. He did his part, the team in front of him didn’t want to compete hard enough for him… that’s hard for me to say, that our program does not compete hard enough.”
Michael Hrabal, UMass’ junior starting goalie, hasn’t played since Nov. 1 against Cornell. Carvel’s update earlier in the Zoom was that Hrabal was still day-to-day.
Freshman defenseman Coleson Hanrahan continued to make his presence felt with more sustained ice time against the Friars last weekend, nearly connecting on a what would have been a thunderous collision, late in the Saturday matchup at Mullins.
Carvel took notice of the Longmeadow native’s mean streak and wants more of his roster to adopt that attitude.
“Coleson goes out there and you notice him, right,” Carvel said. “He runs into some people. We talked about how big our team is this year, we don’t play big. He’s the shortest guy on our team and he plays the biggest.
“Guess who blocks more shots on our team than anybody else, Coleson Hanrahan,” Carvel added. “Does it every day in practice, every day in practice. When we were recruiting him, because he played with [Daniel] Jencko in Youngstown, we asked Jencko about this kid and he goes, ‘oh my god, he blocks 10 shots a practice.’ Yeah, because he’s a nutsy kid. He’s like the Anthony Del Gaizo-type of player. Not pretty to watch, but you want him on your team, you want him in your foxhole, I’ll tell you that. You’re probably going to see a lot more of Coleson play because he’s got heart and soul and we’re a little short in that right now.”
Despite holding a top-15 power play conversion percentage in the nation (24.5% for 13th-best), the Minutemen went 1-for-6 on the man-advantage versus Providence and Carvel feels “terrible” about that area of UMass’ game.
“Providence is a good penalty-killing team, good special teams, they didn’t do anything out of the ordinary,” Carvel said. “Our second unit seems to do more than our first unit and that’s not acceptable.”
Army’s power play numbers are similar as the Black Knights have converted on 20.8% of their man-advantage opportunities.
Barron Woodring, Nik Hong and Jack Ivey have each potted a pair of power-play goals for Army so far this season. Jencko and Vaclav Nestrasil lead the Minutemen in man-advantage markers with three.
The Black Knights appear to be front-runners, of sorts, as they are 3-1-2 when scoring first and undefeated (3-0-1), when leading after 20 minutes. Army is winless when the opposition scores first (0-7-1) and when trailing after the first period (0-4-0).
The Black Knights (3-8-3) will look to end their current nine-game winless streak when UMass (8-7-0) visits Tate Rink on Saturday.
Puck drop is set for 4 p.m.