UMass’ return to TD Garden last Friday for the Hockey East semifinals came on a momentous anniversary for the program. On March 23, 2007, the Minutemen played their first NCAA Tournament game in Rochester, New York, a tense 1-0 overtime win over top-seeded Clarkson.
On Friday, UMass will begin play in its second NCAA Tournament in school history, this time as the top seed in the Northeast Regional in Manchester, New Hampshire. As the Minutemen prepare to skate back into the national postseason, here is a look back at the 2006-07 team that made history.
The Prologue
UMass qualified for the Hockey East semifinals in both 2002-03 and 2003-04, advancing to the championship game in 2004. The Minutemen won just 13 games the next two seasons and entered the 2006-07 year with lower expectations.
P.J. Fenton, then a junior forward, now a scout for the Minnesota Wild: It was getting close there for a little while. The two classes before I arrived they had Tommy Poeck and Greg Mauldin, and I’ll remember watching those games they played at the Boston Garden as being stepping stones for what we tried to do and what we could accomplish.
Kevin Jarman, then a senior forward, now retired from hockey and living in Canada: My first year we did very well, that’s when we had Thomas Poeck and then we had two years where we underachieved in my opinion. … We had a couple of guys in my year in our senior season, it was time to put some good hockey together. We had some guys who were freshmen the year before like Jon Quick. All these guys are a year older in combination with that senior class knowing it’s time to play some good hockey. It started going well early and we just continued it from there.
The Minutemen tied No. 17 Clarkson at home in the second game of the season before stunning No. 8 New Hampshire on the road in the third game. UMass also tied with No. 7 Boston University and beat No. 6 Boston College in the first half of the season en route to making its way into the national polls.
Jarman: We were winning games early, we were feeling good about ourselves, we had momentum, we had a lot of different forwards contributing at different times. When one guy or one line wasn’t clicking, another line or another couple of guys would pick up the slack.
Mark Coogan, blogger behind Fear The Triangle: It was a really weird season. They were beating some good teams here and there early in the season and then they played Minnesota’s tournament halfway through the season and they had a terrible tournament. They tied Ferris State and then lost to Alabama-Huntsville and the game after that they lost right away to Merrimack. They had been ranked when they headed out to Minnesota and then quickly they weren’t ranked again and it seemed like they were going to collapse at that point.
The Maine Event
The Minutemen worked a split with No. 2 New Hampshire in the middle of January that seemed to steady the ship. They tied No. 6 Boston University again and beat Boston College for a second time, but still found themselves with an uphill climb in the middle of February.
UMass went 3-0-1 in its final four games in February before heading into the season finale, a two-game homestand against Maine. The Minutemen swept both games and then swept the Black Bears in the Hockey East quarterfinals the following week at the Mullins Center.
Jonathan Quick, then a sophomore goalie, now a Los Angeles Kings goalie: Throughout the season, we were winning games that were tough games on the road, they thought they were upsets at the time, but turned out we had a really good team. Toward the end of the year, we had a little momentum going into the Hockey East playoffs and we had Maine at home and beat them back-to-back games. Then we played them in the first round of the Hockey East playoffs and same thing, we beat them back-to-back games. We beat them four in a row and they were one of the better teams in Hockey East at the time, so we felt like after those back-to-back weeks that we’re going to have a chance of getting into that tournament.
Of course, the Minutemen didn’t make it easy on themselves. They dropped a heartbreaking double-overtime semifinal to New Hampshire, which put them squarely on the bubble for the final day of the conference tournaments. But UMass got the help it needed to secure a spot in the NCAA Tournament field.
Coogan: They made it to the semifinals and played UNH. Going in, there wasn’t quite as much bracketology at that point, but it was still out there. As fans, we knew there were a couple of scenarios where they could potentially get an at-large, but for the most part, they needed to at least get to the final, if not win the final to get in. The scenarios were not overly likely scenarios. I remember after they lost that overtime game to New Hampshire, I was just thinking ‘Well, they got close but they’re not going to make it.’ It was a lot like the 2004 team where that was a good team but they didn’t make the tournament and didn’t get that final win that they needed.
My wife and I went to the (Hockey East final) and we were kind of keeping an eye on scoreboards and saw a couple of things were breaking our way. It wasn’t until driving home from the Hockey East final, I somehow randomly – and I still don’t know how this happened – I somehow found the Quinnipiac-Clarkson ECAC championship game on the radio. I live south of Boston and I don’t know how that game was on any radio station I could get in my car, but somehow I found it. It was pretty crazy, that’s how I figured out they were getting in. I listened to Clarkson win that game in overtime and I realized that one of those unlikely scenarios actually came through and UMass was going to the tournament.
Cory Quirk, then a sophomore forward, now plays for Fischtown Pinguins in German DEL: It was obviously a special moment for everyone. It was a huge moment for UMass hockey to be that first team. … That was the pinnacle of that season. It was our goal to get to the NCAAs and win a game. Just to get there was not good enough, we wanted to win a game and be that first team to do that. Obviously when you come in as a recruit, they tell you, you could be the first team to win a Hockey East title and do all that, but NCAAs was huge. That was a big stepping stone for us.
Tournament Time
The Minutemen were the fourth seed in the East Regional, which was being played that year in Rochester, New York. The opponent in the first round was Clarkson, the same team whose victory earned UMass that at-large spot.
Quick: When we took the trip up to Rochester, we had a lot of confidence in ourselves, we felt like we would be able to beat anybody. Going into the game, the guys were really confident and looking forward to playing this because for everyone in the locker room, it was the first chance at playing an NCAA Tournament game. They had a really good team, Clarkson, and it was a battle, it was the kind of playoff game where both teams were playing well defensively and not giving up too much offensively.
In fact, no one scored in regulation as Quick and his Clarkson counterpart, future AHL journeyman goalie David Leggio, battled save for save. Quick made 18 saves in the second period and another 10 in the third to keep the game goalless while Leggio stopped all 16 shots he faced in the third period.
Quirk: We go to overtime and we arguably have the best goaltender in the country at that time, we felt like if we get a good chance and can bury it. Knowing he was there obviously helped us a lot confidence-wise.
A little more than seven minutes into overtime, Jordan Virtue flipped a shot at Leggio, but Jarman was there to clean up the rebound and score UMass’ most important overtime goal at the time.
Jarman: The puck was sort of loose right there and the goalie was down. It wasn’t really a full shot, it was more of a chip and I was just trying to get it over him and luckily that happened. After that, I don’t remember much, everybody just came skating out.
The prize for UMass was a fifth contest against Maine in a span of three weeks. This time, Ben Bishop was in net for the Black Bears after missing the four games earlier that month and backstopped Maine to a 3-1 victory.
Fenton: I thought it was unfortunate that we both got placed in the same bracket. It’s really hard to beat somebody two times in a row, let alone four times in a row, let alone five times. It probably fell that day more in their favor, but looking back now, it’s still a pretty special team to be apart of. It’s something to be proud of and hold onto for the rest of our lives.
Quick: With the familiarity of playing them as often as we did playing them in the few weeks leading up to it, it’s very tough to beat a team five times in a row. I’m sure they had a little revenge on their mind, so they were pretty motivated. Their goalie, Ben Bishop, he was hurt for a couple of the games and he was back for that game. Going into it, we still felt we were more than capable of winning the game and we wanted to get the opportunity to play in the Frozen Four. But the way it fell that night, it didn’t go our way, but getting the opportunity to play in those types of games is still very special.
Quick-er Than The Rest
Everyone around that 2006-07 groundbreaking team named Quick as the reason UMass was able to reach the tournament for the first time in program history. His 37 games played are the most for a UMass goalie in a single season while his 19 wins that year were the most until Matt Murray won 20 this season. He had a 2.16 goals against average and .929 save percentage that season, both school records for goalies with at least 300 minutes in goal.
Fenton: First and foremost, it was Jon Quick. If you don’t have a goalie, you can’t win. He kept us in every game and he won us a bunch of games and that was probably the deciding factor was his play. He was an All-American that year and deservedly so. He was the backbone of our team.
Quirk: We kind of knew that we could play offense and we had good enough defense to get things done while knowing Jon was there to save us no matter what. It kind of gave us the freedom to play and the confidence to beat teams that were kind of looking down on us at the time when UMass wasn’t good.
Jarman: You see him play now in LA, his ability to move side to side, there’s not a lot of goalies in the world who can do that. But when you’re with him every day, you see just how competitive he is and how much he wants to win and how important hockey is to him. When you have a guy who not only has the talent and ability, but to have the will, too. When we scored goals on him in practice, he’d get fired up, he wouldn’t like it. Just that will and that real desire to not let any puck by him, that builds confidence in other people.
Quirk: I lived with Jon for two years and knowing him since then, he’s always about everyone else. He just does his part and he was the biggest competitor ever at practice. You could kind of tell he was kind of raw then, he’s more polished now as a goaltender, but you could tell if he just kept on doing the right thing that he was going to be the real deal.