AMHERST — So often the box score doesn’t tell the full story of a game, and Friday was one of those nights for UMass.
The third-ranked Minutemen defeated Western Mass. rival American International College, 4-1, in front of a Homecoming crowd at the Mullins Center.
UMass scored three goals in the final three minutes of the game to pull away, and killed off all seven power plays it afforded the Yellow Jackets. By any stretch, those would be mostly positive statistics for a team.
Yet Greg Carvel didn’t sound like the coach of a winning hockey team Friday night as he lambasted his team’s effort in the first period and expressed his frustrations with the parade to the penalty box. The positive he took from the game was that UMass met the challenge every time it needed to play desperate hockey.
“We tell our guys every puck matters, you never know which one will win or lose the game,” Carvel said. “The pucks didn’t matter (to us) early in the game, we had a lot of guys just swinging sticks, we weren’t physical, we weren’t playing to our identity. We play to our identity and score the game-winning goal, it’s that extra effort that needs to be there all the time.”
Jack Suter was credited with an assist on both of John Leonard’s goals, but the two helpers couldn’t have been more different. It was Suter who listened to the scouting report and knew the breakout AIC was going to try after gaining possession in their own zone with less than four minutes to play. The junior knew the moves the Yellow Jackets’ defender was going to make and timed his stick check perfectly to free the puck for Leonard to skate in on.
Leonard had Bobby Trivigno blazing in from the other side, but the Amherst native decided not to risk a pass through a defender and instead buried a shot five-hole with three minutes left in the game to break the deadlock. Two minutes later, Suter fed Leonard for an empty-net goal to seal the game.
“I knew the D-man was going to go up and look for a pass back, so my main priority was going up and taking that pass away,” Suter said. “He just held onto it for a little too long and I was able to get under his stick and John was right there.”
UMass (4-1-0) had to work hard just to stay even with AIC (1-3-0) given how often a white jersey was sitting in the penalty box in the second and third periods. The Yellow Jackets had six power plays over the course of the final 40 minutes, none more dangerous than the two-minute 5-on-3 that occurred when a Zac Jones cross-checking penalty overlapped with the five-minute major assessed to UMass sophomore Anthony Del Gaizo for a headshot to Hugo Reinhardt.
Through the tense moments of the penalty kill, the Minutemen’s nation-leading unit tightened up and prevented the Yellow Jackets fr om creating any offense. AIC had just one shot on that 5-on-3 penalty and just three over the course of those power plays in the second and third periods. AIC coach Eric Lang said UMass showed first-hand why it had killed off all 19 penalties it took so far this season. The Minutemen showed an aggression they couldn’t match at even strength for much of the game.
“We talk a lot about it on the penalty kill and special teams, even though we’re down a guy, we still need to be aggressive and always be pressuring that puck and forcing them to try to make plays under pressure,” Leonard said. “I can roll through a list of guys who made some big-time plays on the penalty kill whether it was 5-on-3 or 5-on-4, so when you have everyone going and everyone trying to get the puck out of the zone, it’s a lot easier.”
What frustrated Carvel was how UMass simply squandered the momentum it built with its hard work and dedication on the penalty kill. It took a little more than a minute after killing off the Del Gaizo major penalty for the Minutemen to find themselves back in the penalty box. They took two more penalties in the third period and AIC began to possess the puck more on the later power plays, even though the Yellow Jackets didn’t test Matt Murray.
As the Minutemen killed off penalties, the crowd answered with the type of cheers it normally reserves for goals and great offense. UMass fed off that energy as much as it could, but Carvel said it concerns him that his team couldn’t translate that effort into a more dominant performance.
“You could tell the fans really appreciated the effort and that brought some energy into the building,” Carvel said. “But after you do that, we needed to take control of the game, we needed to build off that and we were just back in the penalty box again later in the period. There were some really good signs, when we were desperate we played well, but when we were lackadaisical, it was ugly.”