NORTHFIELD — Greg Carvel has experienced plenty of beautiful scenery in his two-plus decades traveling the world as a hockey coach, so he undoubtedly enjoyed the foliage on his drive up Route 63 to Town Hall.
Carvel, the first-year UMass hockey coach, visited the Senior Center Thursday to speak to a gathering of a dozen townspeople and answer questions about the program and about hockey in general for an hour.
Northfield resident Bill McGee, a devoted hockey fan for years, set up the meet-and-greet through the UMass hockey office.
“Bill called and said he has a group that likes to come down to games,” recalled Carvel. “We told him somebody from our staff would come up, (but) this was an off week for us, so I figured I’d have a little extra time before practice.”
Visiting with and speaking to groups in the local area is something Carvel looks forward to when time allows.
“You get to meet a lot of interesting people,” said the 45-year-old Carvel, who coached pro hockey for 15 years — 12 in the NHL – before he was hired as head coach at St. Lawrence, his alma mater. “I’m a little familiar with Northfield because of the prep school (Northfield Mount Hermon), and I don’t turn much down. I did this on my own.”
Carvel believes that getting out in the community is also beneficial for his players, in spite of their demands on the ice and in the classroom.
“I think every good hockey team tries to do as much community outreach as they can,” said Carvel. “We can’t be too demanding of the guys, because we’re asking a lot of them already. We want them to be good students and do everything they can to be the best hockey players they can be, so there’s only so much we can ask them to do beyond that.”
Although Carvel said he doesn’t have any other community speaking engagements on his schedule like the Norhtfield visit, he said the program plans to reach out to a youth group in the near future.
“We want to form an ambassador program with Amherst Youth Hockey and its nine teams,” he said. “We want to make a real good connection there. We’ll do as much as we can.”
UMass, which split its season-opening series against Colorado College last weekend, is using its extra time off to prepare for a stretch of four games in nine days that starts with a non-conference home game against Army on Oct. 21 at 7 p.m.
The Minutemen then visit third-ranked Quinnipiac on Oct. 25, and open Hockey East play with home games against New Hampshire on Oct. 28 and No. 6-ranked Boston College on Oct. 29.
Carvel acknowledged that he would like to see more fans in the Mullins Center for home games to create a better and louder environment, but realizes winning games is the quickest way to do that. Community outreach is another avenue, albeit to a lesser degree.
“It’s fun for me,” said Carvel of the community outreach. “I don’t know many more tickets we’ll sell, but that’s not why I do it. I like making the connections (in the community) and help build the program.”
As for on the ice, “I don’t know what to expect,” he said. “All I’m trying to do is to get the team to play really hard and play together.”