Good morning!
The Frozen Four is in Las Vegas this week, an ideal venue for three teams from west of the Mississippi — Michigan, Denver, North Dakota — and another just east of the river, Wisconsin. East Coast hockey was a bust this season as coaches like BU’s Jay Pandolfo and BC’s Greg Brown were unable to get their wannabe Macklin Celebrini’s and Ryan Leonard’s to play as a team.
UMass was hobbled from the start when the team’s leading scorer Cole O’Hara decided at the last moment to join three other top scorers and turn pro. Unable to overcome a slow start and with 22 fewer regular season goals than last season, UMass missed making the NCAA Tournament for the first time in five years.
Give coach Greg Carvel and his staff credit for rallying the team from last place in December to a second place finish in Hockey East, and racking up one more win than they did in ’24-’25. Indeed, it was Carvel’s seventh 20-win season in eight years and his overall record in Amherst has improved to 192-146-26.
The Million Dollar Club
Compare Carvel’s success with the university’s two highest paid coaches, basketball coach Frank Martin and football coach Joe Harasymiak.
Martin replaced Matt McCall of whom there will never be a statue outside the Mullins Center. At Martin’s introductory press conference, director of broadcasting Jay Burnham beamed and said, “Wow! What a great day to be a Minuteman!”
Martin’s turned out to be a blowhard and a bust with a 64-63 record and unmet promises of making the NCAA Tournament. But get a load of this — Martin’s total pay in FY 2025 according to the state’s payroll database was $2,175,592.
Wow, what a great year to be Frank Martin.
And what a great year it was to be Joe Harasymiak. Two days before the season opener against Temple, Harasymiak said, “I expect us to win.”
UMass lost 42-10 en route to an historic 0-12 season and yet he made $1,406,376 during his first full year on the job.
Where’s DOGE when you need ‘em?
For a Few Dollars More
In a meritocracy where wins matter, Carvel and not Martin would be the highest paid coach, but Carvel was paid $701,048 in FY 2025.
Surely his work ethic is over and above his contract’s job description. He writes his own newsletter and sends it to over a thousand fans, he’s spearheaded multimillion dollar fundraising drives, and he recruits players who are as competitive in the classroom as they are on the ice.
Recently he said: “I get emails weekly from faculty and staff around campus praising our players for their performance in class, their professionalism, the class they show and the extra things they do to support our community.”
Michigan State’s Adam Nightingale makes $1.3 million according to the school’s website and to my knowledge is the only college hockey coach making seven figures. It’s time to make Carvel the second member of the Million Dollar Club.
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Love for Sale
Anybody know what Thorr Bjorn’s been up to these days? Bjorn’s hiring as senior deputy athletic director and chief administrative officer was announced in November, three days after the Minutemen lost a 44-10 squeaker to Akron. “Obviously an exciting 24 hours,” AD Ryan Bamford said at the press conference. “Hundred percent my idea.”
Sitting between the two men was coach Joe Harasymiak, who was trying not to catch Bjorn’s head cold and didn’t say a word for the entire 30-minute presser.
Not so Bamford who prattled on about why Bjorn was such an important hire. Using bureaucratic lingo to lull the listeners, Bamford spoke of Bjorn “impacting the fan experience… leading our functional management of this department… (and being) tremendous the way he has acquitted himself in administrative circles.”
Bamford said the hiring was the result of bumping Jeff Smith across the street “to be the rec director.”
Bjorn’s no rec director, his title can barely fit on a business card.
When Bjorn walked off the field holding an umbrella at rainy McGuirk after UMass lost to Bowling Green, 45-10, on Nov. 25 a former player said, “He had an umbrella? He’s not one of us.”
No indeed, and in more ways than one. Bjorn’s last day as URI’s athletic director was Nov. 29. When a reporter asked him why he’d leave URI after 18 years he said, “I wouldn’t leave URI for anywhere else. I loved Rhode Island. Why leave a place I truly loved? It’s to come back to a place I really love.”
Bjorn’s $395,000 salary at UMass is $27,500 more than URI’s but that had nothing to do with it.
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GHS baseball coach Tom Suchanek put three sets of brothers in the lineup for Wednesday’s 10-1 win over Palmer: Chase and Bryce Zraunig; Luca and Nico Siano; and Casey and Bodie Burke.
All three fathers — Matt, Alex and Jack — also played for Suchanek.
While we’re at it, Mark Enoch remembers watching Suchanek pitch at Deerfield Academy. Astros scout Stan Benjamin signed him and sent him south where according to Enoch, “He had lowest ERA in the Florida State League for an Astro farm team.”
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SQUIBBERS: The NCAA’s leading hitter at this writing is Western Michigan’s Tanner Mally (.495) who went 5-for-5 with four RBIs in the last game of a three-game sweep against UMass. .… First in the classroom and last at the plate, the Princeton Tigers are hitting .225, lowest of the 300 teams in D-1; UMass is 271st at .245. … At this writing Edmonton’s Connor McDavid is beginning to pull away from the field in the NHL scoring race. With less than a week to go till the season ends on Thursday, McDavid had 133 points to Tampa Bay’s Nikita Kucherov with 127 and Colorado’s Nathan MacKinnon with 123. … Gators catcher Cole Stanford of Harris County, Georgia uses Travis Tritt’s “Modern Day Bonnie and Clyde” to stroll to the plate: “Rolling north on 95 with a redhead riding shotgun and a pistol by my side…” Boston mayor Michele Wu hoped they were yelling “Wu!” not “Boo” when she was on the field at Fenway Park last week. … “How about those people in the monster seats today? They have to feel it,“ said Jesse Agler, radio voice of the Padres during the frigid Fenway series. “I’ll take the six layers of clothing to last week’s 105 degrees,” replied sidekick Tony Gwynn Jr. … Josh Mauer sounds much better calling games for the Brewers now that he’s abandoned the pompoms he used at UMass. … What was it with those UMass hockey announcers intentionally using bad grammar? “UMass are strong in goal… Providence lead Merrimack… Trump bomb Iran. …” Sorry fellas, Foster Hewitts you ain’t. … Congrats to UMass softball coach Danielle Henderson for her 200th career win on Wednesday. After a 21-4 shellacking by Buffalo in the first game, the Minutewomen walked off the nightcap, 5-4, in eight innings. As the song goes, You gotta have heart.