Good morning!
The UMass hockey team’s 5-3 win against AIC in the season opener drew 4,324 to the Mullins Center. It was an exceptional turnout considering the rainy weather and paucity of students. First line right wing Ryan Lautenbach scored the season’s first goal, and his linemate Taylor Makar made the team’s first trip to the sin bin. The line was centered by Lucas Mercuri, whose father Joseph drives from Montreal to see his son play.
Every line and each defensive pairing contributed at least one point to the cause. Coach Greg Carvel named goalie Cole Brady the game’s first star for making 15 of his 36 saves in the first period while the game was scoreless.
Defensemen Ryan Ufko and Samuli Niinisaari earned the coach’s respective second and third stars for scoring a goal apiece and delivering bone-crushing checks along the boards. It was Ufko’s 70th game for UMass but the first for Niinisaari who graduated from Brown with a biology degree.
Much-ballyhooed 18-year-old goalie Michael Hrabal made his debut on Sunday in a 5-1 exhibition win at Dartmouth.
Carvel called both their performances “exceptional” but hasn’t said if he’ll alternate goalies like he did when Filip Lindberg and Matt Murray helped lift UMass into the national top 10.
As usual, fans had to shuffle through the metal detectors. I was told to back up and re-enter, put my hands over my head and lift up my baseball cap in case I was trying to smuggle in a canary.
We sat behind a rowdy bunch of young Yellowjackets fans who swilled beers and were true to their team. “Get off my goalie!” they yelled at a UMass forechecker.
“Open your eyes! Figure it out!” they yelled at the ref.
When one of them dropped an f-bomb, another one yelled, “Hey, no swears like that! Keep it clean! There’s a little kid over there!”
I counted at least seven uniformed cops and at least as many Green Mountain Security personnel. “My job is to notice what you don’t, or maybe you do,” one of them said. A cop came through the door dressed in sweats and with a sniffer dog on a leash. “If he ever sits down in front of you, you might want to run,” said the security cop.
The UMass pep band played a psychedelic tune from the late ‘60s called “25 or 6 to 4” and red-clad workers from Diversified Building Services swept rogue gum wrappers off the concourse floor. Three of the four water fountains didn’t work and the UMass staff ran out of line sheets, but Mr. Slice made his first save and the Minutemen had their first win. Bring on the Wolverines.
UMASS NOTES: Twenty-year-old Jack Musa of Orange Park, Fla., potted his first collegiate goal by wristing the puck past AIC’s Nills Wallstrom. Musa’s ascension to D-1 began with the Pittsburgh Penguins Elite-14-U team, followed by two years at Trinity-Pawling prep and three years in the North American and U.S. hockey leagues. All told, Musa played in 277 amateur games before he stepped onto the ice at the Mullins Center.
Newcomer Christian Sanda, a grad transfer from Union, played on the fourth line after Aydar Suniev didn’t dress because of what Carvel termed a day-to-day injury. “Sanda was a late pick up because we lost Tyson Dyck who went into the portal on the last possible day and we hadn’t replaced him.”
Dyck transferred to Wisconsin.
Amherst resident Ryan Leonard told the College Hockey News that he gave UMass a long, hard look before choosing BC. “I tried to give them as much of a chance as I could but it was never my dream to play five minutes down the road. Nothing against the coaching staff, coach Carvel is amazing.”
Leonard had an assist in BC’s overtime win against defending national champion Quinnipiac at sold out M&T Arena in Hampden, Conn., last weekend.
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Last week’s column item about the Cricket World Cup in India prompted former 30-year Recorder sports staffer Mark Durant to fill us in on the rules of the game. “I learned most of the basics watching the 2021 T20 World Cup,” Durant texted from his home in Las Vegas.
“The one-day international format they’re using this year is only used every four years. Each game is scheduled for 50 innings (called overs) for each side and the games can last for up to eight hours. The T20 format (20 scheduled innings), which was used the first time I watched, is a much better format and only lasts three to four hours.
“It’s remarkably similar to baseball in several ways. Just imagine it with two bases, and a catch by a fielder is a wicket, or an out. Sixes, or maximums (home runs), are worth six runs, boundaries (ground rule doubles) are worth four, and two batters will run between the wickets (bases) on ground balls for runs as well.
The biggest difference is, instead of alternating at-bats, the batting team goes through all of their innings and then the opponent starts the ‘chase’. It’s fun to watch. What other sport can you see a 300-run rally to win?”
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The UMass Minutemen are 42 1/2-point underdogs against Penn State this afternoon. They’re getting $1.6 million but will be lucky to return with enough healthy bodies to beat Merrimack next month. The Nittany Lions have four returning starters on the OL and actionnetwork.com’s Michael Calabrese compares 6-5, 240-pound quarterback Drew Allar to Drew Bledsoe.
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The Orioles were three bricks shy of a load getting swept by Texas. Adley Rutschman and Cedric Mullins were a combined 1-for-24, but the time worn refrain of wait til next year might ring true if 19-year-old Jackson Holliday makes the opening day lineup. Holliday went from Single-A to Triple-A this season. “The hardest part for me was how many games we played coming from high school,” he told MLB’s Grant Paulsen.
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SQUIBBERS: Congrats to Greenfield native Dave Lorenz who finished Sunday’s Army 10 Miler in 1:39:28. Dimitri Cheuko of Bethesda won in 36:14 and Elvin Kibit of Colorado Springs was the women’s winner in 54:51. … The NMH boys soccer team remained undefeated (5-0-1) by tying Avon Old Farms on Wednesday, 0-0. … Bob Papa’s play-by-play of Miami’s sack-happy defense against Giants QB Daniel Jones: “Jones back to throw, sacked immediately. Hello. Hello. Hello.” … Forget about signing pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Boston’s only hope of restoring the fans’ confidence is to sign Shohei Ohtani the same way they signed Pedro Martinez, Curt Schilling and Manny Ramirez. … Scott Boras didn’t ask the Phillies for an opt-out when they inked Bryce Harper for 13 years and $330 million. “He didn’t want one,” said Boras. … It was hard not to notice a woman named Lori Geiser who was sitting in the first row behind home plate at Citizens Bank Park on Wednesday. A CBS affiliate reported the photo she held was of her late friend Alaine Porter who was a passionate Phillies fan. The two women taught together at the same charter school. … Phillies manager Rob Thomson played in the Appalachian League and is old school, so it wasn’t a surprise that when TBS broadcaster Brian Anderson mentioned Zack Wheeler’s “sweeper” he snapped, “Call it a slurve. It’s been a slurve for 100 years.”
Chip Ainsworth is an award-winning colum nist who has penned his observations about sports for decades in the Pioneer Valley. He can be reached at chipjet715@icloud.com