Whatever bad taste lingered after the UMass hockey team’s 3-0 loss to Boston College at TD Garden on Friday was gone after the NCAA announced its regional pairings Sunday evening.
UMass (28-10) will play Harvard (19-10-3) at 3 p.m. on Friday at the 9,852-seat SNHU Arena in Manchester, N.H. The game will be televised nationally on ESPN2.
Nice town, nice time, nice team
The mid-afternoon start will allow fans to stroll over to the Red Arrow Diner for the blue plate special and maybe meet one of the presidential candidates who’ve begun trolling the Granite State.
Harvard finished tied for third with Clarkson in the ECAC (13-7-2) but Clarkson beat the Crimson in the conference semifinals at Lake Placid, 5-2, in front of 4,816 fans at Herb Brooks Arena.
Despite the two schools’ proximity, this will be only their ninth meeting. The first occasion was in 1913, less than a year after the Titanic sank and the Red Sox moved into Fenway Park, and resulted in a 9-3 win by the Crimson.
The two teams have played four times since the Mullins Center opened, most recently on Dec. 2, 2011, when they skated to a 4-4 tie at the Mullins Center. Current Buffalo Sabres winger Conor Sheary scored for UMass, and goaltender Kevin Boyle made 40 saves. On Valentines Day this year, Boyle, who plays for the Anaheim Ducks, shut out Vancouver in his first NHL start.
In 2003, the No. 8 Minutemen dropped a 5-3 decision to the Crimson in Cambridge and lost to them in 1998 under coach Joe Mallen, but beat them 4-2 during a holiday tournament in 1999. The all-time series favors Harvard, 6-1-1.
Harvard is 16-16-1 against Hockey East opponents the last eight years, and most of those games were contested against Boston College, Boston University and Northeastern in the annual Beanpot Tournament.
The Crimson is coached by Dedham’s Ted Donato, a Harvard grad and MVP of the Frozen Four the year they won the national championship in 1989. He was drafted in the fifth round by the Bruins and scored 113 of his 150 career goals wearing the Spoked B on his sweater. He retired in 2004 and four months later coached his first game at Harvard. His teams have made five trips to the NCAA tourney, including the 2017 Frozen Four in Chicago, where it lost in the semifinals to Minnesota-Duluth.
During UMass coach Greg Carvel’s four years at St. Lawrence, the Saints were 5-3-1 against Harvard, outscoring them 27-18 and outshooting them, 312-246.
This will be Harvard’s 25th NCAA appearance, but just the second for UMass. After their loss to Boston College, a disconsolate Carvel told the media he expected better things the next time UMass steps on the ice. “They showed up ready to play and we didn’t,” said Carvel. “I can’t imagine we’ll let that happen two games in a row.”
The Northeast Regional championship between the winners of UMass/Harvard and Clarkson (26-10-2)/Notre Dame (22-13-3) will play at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday (ESPNU). The last team standing advances to the Frozen Four in Buffalo on April 11.
TICKET PRICES: Tickets to both the semifinals and the final are priced at $45, but that’s misleading because Ticketmaster, aka Ticketscalper, adds a hefty surcharge.
One ticket will cost $60; two will cost $116.15. (Seniors 65-plus get a $10 discount).
Fans can wait and pay face value the day of the game because it’s doubtful the game will be a sellout. When the University of New Hampshire played Miami-Ohio in 2011, the announced attendance in SNHU Arena was 7,608 and 5,906 the following night when UNH lost to Notre Dame.
SCOUTING HARVARD: Junior defenseman Adam Fox is the Crimson’s counterpart to UMass defenseman Cale Makar. The Ivy League Player of the Year and Hobey Baker candidate is the NCAA points and assists leader (48 and 38 respectively). He leads the Crimson in shots (115) and has three goals and 18 assists in his last 11 games.
Fox was drafted in the third round by Calgary in 2016, but was traded to Carolina after he decided to return to Harvard for his junior season. He’s on a career path similar to Jimmy Vesey who won the Hobey Baker award and was drafted by Nashville in 2012. Vesey spurned the Preds to stay at Harvard all four years — hey, Harvard is Harvard — and after college signed with the New York Rangers.
Sophomore defensemen Reilly Walsh (a Devils third-round pick) and freshman blueliner Jack Rathbone (a Canucks fourth-round pick) have teamed up for 19 goals and 34 assists.
Walsh has a team-leading nine power play goals, freshman Jack Drury has six, and senior forward Lewis Zerter-Gossage has five. Gossage has a team-leading 18 goals on 90 shots, a dazzling 20 percent beat rate.
Goaltending became an issue last month when Michael Lackey was injured midway through a 5-3 loss at Clarkson. St. Louis native Cameron Gornet started the next six games, but Donato used Lackey in the semifinal against Clarkson and pulled him after he allowed his fourth goal.
Harvard’s previous goalie Merrick Madsen played the bulk of Harvard’s games from 2015-18 and is currently skating for Tuscon in the AHL. Lackey is a senior and Gornet’s a junior and both are known quantities. Freshman Derek Schaedig played parts of two games this season and allowed two goals in 23 minutes of ice time.
Who Donato puts between the pipes on Friday is anyone’s guess, but Gornet’s gotten the bulk of the work.
SCOUTING UMASS: UMass defenseman Mario Ferraro was beaten on both BC goals. He turned the puck over in his own end on the first goal, and was caught up ice on the second goal. A San Jose Sharks’ second-round pick, Ferraro has two goals and 10 assists this season after being 4-19-23 his freshman season. His plus/minus is up, however, from five to eight this season. … Goaltender Filip Lindberg has stopped 60 of 63 shots on goal for a .953 save percentage. For comparison’s sake, the NCAA regular season leaders were Quinnipiac’s Andrew Shortridge (.941) and Northeastern’s Cayden Primeau (.935). … “It was the right call,” Carvel said of starting the Finnish freshman against BC. “He played extremely well tonight.”
HOCKEY EAST RECAP: After Northeastern’s Zach Solow scored the winning goal in overtime against BU on Friday, NESN’s Guerin Austin asked him how he planned to celebrate. Solow smiled and said,“Gonna celebrate with a lot of sleep and a lot of recovery.”
The early game afforded Solow and his teammates the luxury of rest and enough of an edge the next day to hold off BC’s late charge and win 3-2.
UMass was the top seed yet had to wait nearly an hour for overtime to end. “Yep PITA for me,” texted a UMass media member, “a pain in the ass. Throw’s everything off.”
Hockey East associate commissioner Brian Smith reiterated that having the top seed doesn’t equate to having the early game. “It’s not an automatic guarantee, it’s a combination of a lot of things, travel, ticket sales…”
Apparently Hockey East officials wanted to give the folks in their covered wagons enough time to get to the game.
TD Garden is a second home for the Boston-based teams thanks to the Beanpot Tournament. “Those kids (BC) played six, eight, 10 games here,” said Greg Carvel “It’s like a home ice advantage.”
Living and playing in Greater Boston provides a comfort zone that others don’t enjoy, and partly as a result, Boston teams have won the conference championship 11 of the last 14 years. BC’s win was the 20th time in 33 games that a Boston team has beaten a HE team from the hinterland.
Perhaps it’s why Quinnipiac has resisted the siren call to join Hockey East, and is partly why Notre Dame jumped to the Big Ten (and paid $250,000 to leave, according to the College Hockey News).
What are the options? UMass could join the ECAC and play Dartmouth, Quinnipiac, Yale, Union and Harvard, et. al., or join the Atlantic Hockey Association and host the conference championship at the Mullins Center.
Preposterous? Absurd? Impossible? Sure it is, until it isn’t.
SHAFER ROASTS REFS: Cornell coach Mike Shafer roasted the officials for not stopping play after the net fell on goalie Jake Kielly during their 3-2 OT loss against Clarkson. Shafer told USCHO.com: “It’s great sportsmanship; our guy is trying to help him, the Clarkson kid is trying to help him. The only guys who aren’t helping him were the officials. They were the ones not doing their job.”
NOTES: UNH Asst. AD Steve Metcalf is on the tournament committee, which might explain why UMass went scoreless in the third period of its 6-0 quarterfinal clincher against the Wildcats. … AIC head coach Eric Lang has a masters degree in organizational behavior, which is probably a helpful tool coaching hockey players. … Two days after shutting out UMass and one day after losing to Northeastern, BC goalie Joseph Woll signed with Toronto. … All six conference championship games last weekend ended in 3-2 scores. … The HE championship game drew 13,750, and 11,572 for the semis. “Really good for both games,” said HE’s Brian Smith. “We’re really pleased with the numbers.” … Joey Kocur’s son Joel had a goal in AIC’s conference semifinal win against Robert Morris. Papa Joe played 821 games in the NHL, mostly with the Red Wings and Rangers. … Hockey East commisioner Joe Bertagna on player acceptance speeches: “Most of these guys are more nervous on the podium than they are on the ice.” … Greg Carvel became the second coach to garner Coach of the Year awards in Hockey East and the ECAC. Carvel did it at St. Lawrence and UMass, and Nate Leaman did it at Union College and Providence. “It’s a program award. It comes from a lot of people not just one,” Carvel told WHMP’s Brock Hines. … NESN’s Tom Caron gets five stars for correctly pronouncing referee Peter Schlitenhart’s name on the first try.
POINTERS TAKE D-III TITLE: The University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point beat Norwich (Vt.) University, 3-2, in overtime before 1,419 fans at KB Willet Arena in Stevens Point last weekend.
The defending champion Cadets (23-5-3) rebounded from a 2-0 deficit and tied the score in the third period with a pair of goals by Coby Downs assisted on both occasions by Scott Swanson and Noah Williams.
Norwich was unable to knock the Pointers (29-0-2) from the ranks of the undefeated. Sophomore defenseman Steven Quagliatta’s goal at 15:13 of sudden death gave them their second D-III title in four years.
The Stevens Point Journal reported that Quagliatta intercepted a Norwich pass and beat the Norwich goalie Tom Aubrun. “He went down on his knees and I ended up finding the corner,” said Quagliatta. “That’s one I’ll remember for the rest of my life.”
The pointers are the first team in NCAA Division III hockey history to go undefeated.