AMHERST — It was pretty early in the game when Mike Souza knew his goalie was dialed in.
Within the first few minutes of Friday’s game at UMass, the New Hampshire coach watched as Mike Robinson flashed his glove on an odd-man rush to stifle the Minutemen’s chance. That one save was all Souza needed to see that the junior was ready to go against a top-10 opponent, and Robinson proved that for all 60 minutes at the Mullins Center.
Robinson made his 31-save performance look routine to stonewall No. 7 UMass and lead New Hampshire to a 1-0 upset over the leaders in Hockey East.
“He challenged the shot, he caught the puck, he held onto it, it was a confident save,” Souza said. “That confidence from that point forward was evident in the way he challenged shots and was seeing the puck well. That was a good performance from him.”
Robinson’s effort was eased by the play of the five skaters in front of him, who crowded UMass (16-8-1, 9-5-1 Hockey East) out of the space it normally operates within. The Minutemen were never able to impose their speed or skill on the game as it turned into a similar tight-checking game the two teams played in November at New Hampshire. And just as in that game, it was a missed block shot from the point that ended up dooming the Minutemen.
UMass failed to clear the puck from behind its own net and New Hampshire worked it back to the blue line for Will MacKinnon. The defenseman let a shot fly through a mass of bodies in front of Matt Murray and the puck dinged the underside of the crossbar and went in for the game’s lone goal. The second-period tally helped erase the memories of the two pucks the Wildcats (13-9-1, 7-6-0) left within inches of the goal line that the Minutemen swept out of the crease.
Those three chances were arguably the best of the game for either team even though UMass outshot New Hampshire 31-19. The Minutemen had plenty of other good chances as well, but they were always missing that last touch on the puck around the net.
“We just couldn’t get to the net to find a puck on our stick,” coach Greg Carvel said. “We had the shots advantage and maybe the chances advantage, but again our power play was unproductive and we just couldn’t score an ugly goal.”
UMass’ failures on the power play cost it a chance at gaining some early momentum in the game. The Minutemen squandered all three chances on the man advantage in the first period and finished 0 for 5 while up a player, dropping them to just 2 of 33 on the power play in 2020. There wasn’t even much for UMass to build off on the power play with just six shots spanning those five chances.
The offense wasn’t that effective at full strength either as UMass was forced away from the dangerous scoring areas by a strong New Hampshire defensive structure. It was one of the Minutemen’s worst offensive performances at home in recent memory and just the second time they’ve been shut out at Mullins Center in the past three seasons.
“We didn’t get a ton of really high, high-end chances,” Carvel said. “We had a tough time getting to the inside, they kept us to the outside pretty well, they defended really well, I was impressed by that. They neutralized us more than most teams have in this building, so a job well done by them.”
The Minutemen will need to find a way to break through the Wildcats’ defenses Saturday in Durham, New Hampshire, to avoid dropping all three games this season to New Hampshire. Finding the solution to winning low-scoring, tight-checking games will be vital to UMass if it wants any chance to match the accomplishments of last year’s historic run.
Carvel said he expects most teams will try to replicate what New Hampshire has done so well for 120 minutes against UMass this season, and the onus on his team is to find the way to break through those defensive shells.
“Every game we have left is going to be like this,” Carvel said. “Every game is going to be tight. We have a team – especially last year – that can create a lot of offense using our speed and our skill and some nights it’s not going to be that easy. We have to have a bit of our identity be that we’re just going to throw everything at the net and be there and hope it bounces on our stick. We talk about, we work on it at practice, and there’s certain parts to our game we’re good at, and scoring ugly goals is not one of them.”