AMHERST – Party’s over.
The UMass hockey team celebrated winning its first national championship all summer, parading the trophy around area ballparks and relishing the community’s support.
Both captain Boby Trivigno and coach Greg Carvel threw out first pitches before Red Sox games. Carvel spoke at the UMass commencement. The only thing left to do is raise the banners Saturday against Minnesota State. As those preparations are being made, the Minutemen have shifted their focus to the next one.
“The glitz and glamour are great, but our success is built on our work ethic,” UMass senior assistant captain Colin Felix said. “Everyone calls us champions, but obviously the school is champions as well and it’s nice to see the school kind of embrace that and embrace us.”
Even amongst the summer’s revelry, the Minutemen were also on campus training and adjusting to new faces. Of the 27 players (28 if you include emergency backup goalie Zac Steigmeyer from the Frozen Four opener) that won the title last year, 16 return, including starting goalie Matt Murray, leading scorer Trivigno and All-American defenseman Matthew Kessel.
Trivigno is the captain after a year as an assistant last year, and Kessel and Felix will serve as the assistant captains.
“It’s really comforting to me, having Bobby Trivigno and Colin and Felix. They’ve won a lot of hockey games here, and they built this culture. They’re very protective and proud of it, so they’re equally as invested in it as I am,” Carvel said. “Really good leadership, that’s always critically important to have a good year. This is the year where our captains are our best players, I don’t know if we’ve ever had that.”
UMass’ leadership group has helped onboard nine incoming players. That includes three transfers and six freshmen being integrated up and down the lineup. Freshmen defensemen Scott Morrow and Ryan Ufko and forward Taylor Makar were drafted in July. The Minutemen will also benefit from two Ivy League transfers that couldn’t play last year (Cornell’s Cam Donaldson and Dartmouth’s Matt Baker) and a former Frozen Four foe in Denver transfer Slava Demin.
“These guys have been super malleable and listen to us tremendously, ask a lot of questions, they go out a lot for extra work,” Felix said. “You can tell they’re here to get better and get caught up and look after older guys a lot and they put a lot on the table for us to learn from them and to learn from us.”
The leadership group wants to include the newcomers in continuing success, not alienate them from past victories.
“You don’t want to push away the success that we have. You want to embrace it and you want to bring everyone up to speed, and let everyone know that the standard that we play at and that’s that’s how we have to play to win,” Felix said. “Obviously we’ve got a little bit of target on our back right now, and teams are going to come in every weekend looking to play as hard, and we’ve got to be ready.”
In addition to being the reigning national champions, the Minutemen are the No. 1 team in both national polls and were voted No. 1 in the Hockey East coaches poll. It’s a familiar pressure for a program that built from the conference’s cellar to a team that has appeared in consecutive national championship games over the past three years.
“One of our goals this year is not just to do it again but grow the gap, just keep getting better everywhere,” Kessel said.
UMass wants to avoid complacency above anything. Just because the Minutemen have been there doesn’t mean they’ll stay there.
“It was nice to celebrate a little bit over the summer but I think we’re past that now,” Trivigno said. “We’re definitely hungry for the next one.”
Kyle Grabowski can be reached at kgrabowski@gazettenet.com. Follow him on Twitter @kylegrbwsk.