CANTLON: HUSKIES CLOSE OUT REGULAR SEASON AGAINST THE MINUTEMEN 

CANTLON: Huskies Close OuT Regular Season Against the Minutemen

BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings

HARTFORD, CT – The Hockey East and college hockey season is often a blip and its done.

UCONN (15-17-2 overall,11-12-1 HEA) closed out its 2017-18 regular season by losing a heartbreaking 3-2 game to UMASS-Amherst (14-17-2 overall, 8-13-2 HEA).

The Huskies saw their season-high, seven-game winning streak end. The Huskies chance to finish above .500 in Hockey East and hit the .500 mark in their overall record fell short in a rocky, uneven effort.

The loss, which came in the final two minutes after they had tied the game after pulling goaltender, Tanner Creel, occurred just 12 seconds later.

“It was certainly a disappointing loss for our team,” remarked head coach Mike Cavanaugh. “It’s a really good reminder. If you don’t play a full 60-minutes you leave it up in the air whether you’re going to win the hockey game or not. Going into the playoffs, it’s a great lesson for us. It takes you just one game like that to put you behind the eight ball in the playoffs and your season is over.”

The game-winning goal came as Austin Albrecht made a pass to Cale Makar, the highly rated rearguard, and a Colorado Avalanche number one pick. Makar fired the puck from the right-wing boards and it snuck through a mad scramble of players in front of the net. The goal came at 18:52 and was Makar’s fourth of the year. It instantly deflating a crowd of 5,213 that had just gone wild when the Huskies tied it.

“That was a big win for us because we need to win one of the two of our last games. We’re trying to get a home-ice advantage (in the first round). It was a playoff style game and was big for us to come back. They scored with the goalie and for us to bounce right back and score, that was huge for us,” UMASS head coach Greg Carvel said.

The goal did go to review and Carvel, who has seen a few get reversed on the Minuteman this season, was looking for help from a MUCH higher authority.

“We had three others that we had been turned back, so, I was praying really hard saying, ‘Please don’t turn this one back we had worked so hard to get it.’”

With perfect dramatics, the Huskies tied the game at 18:40 on a well-executed pull the goalie situation.

Creel exited to his left to the UCONN bench and then Spencer Naas hopped on the ice. As the extra man swooped in and collected the free puck, he fired a good shot on Matt Murray (24 saves) who stopped it, but Jesse Schwartz found the rebound and popped in his tenth of the season.

“We had a strong third period and outshot them, 12-5. They did good tying the game up. You just can’t give up a goal the very next shift,” Cavanaugh said. He said he had seen this bad habit of allowing goals the next shift. It happened in games against BC, Northeastern, and BU during their strong play over the last month.

After a laborious two periods, the Huskies awoke in the third period.

The Huskies were held at bay for the first 17 minutes of the second frame before doing anything of substance as the lack of intensity and urgency were easily noticeable in part because of the Minutemen tight checking.

“We had a good game plan because they come out their zone with a lot of speed and we did a really good job at defending against that tonight and did a good job at keeping them quiet,” remarked Carvel.

Carvel dropped his team down to nine forwards (UCONN played one less up front) his nine seemed like twelve in the second period.

With 2:50 to go, UCONN charged the net and stopped off from the right wing. Brian Rigali looked to bang in the loose puck and it became a line scrum with all ten players jostling pushing and shoving.

The Huskies finally showed some life and fight.

The game had a very non-descript start as each team tried to test one another saw UCONN take advantage of the first breakdown of the game to score the first goal.

The Huskies broke across the blue line and David Drake dished off a forehand pass that Naas took into the left wing circle and drilled his 14^th short side on Murray. Ness scored a goal for his fourth consecutive game and his point streak to eight games.

UMASS as other opponents have lately against UCONN answered back quickly 2:42 later.

The Minutemen were able to switch off coming into the Huskies end of the ice.

Nik Hildenbrand, a right-handed shot, let one go from just inside the left wing faceoff circle. Creel made the save but left a rebound that George Mika pounced on and put home for his fourth of the season.

“Thank-God that George Mika was there and with the good position to get that goal.”

Then UMASS got help with the second goal as he fired a shot from 25 feet out beating Creel through the five-hole giving them a 2-1 lead as the Minutemen took control of the play completely away from UCONN.

Now the Huskies must wait until the end of the weekend to see whom their first-round opponent will be.

One thing for certain is that they will be at home and if you had said that in January when they came back from break and hit a rut in the ice, a home playoff series was the last thing anybody expected. On the eve of the postseason, the game as a clarion call was clearly uppermost in the mind of the UCONN head coach.

“If you don’t play a full 60 you leave the game to chance that’s something we have to really work on this week. I would have rather won this game that’s somber locker room and that hasn’t been that way in awhile and when we play next week hopefully that is something our team will learn from. ”

NOTES:

Scratched for UCONN tonight were Max Kalter (sick) and Miles Gendron (lower body) and Justin Howell (lower body and likely finished for the season).

Sophomore goalie Adam Huska, out since January 12th, didn’t start but was on the bench in a backup role. “I knew that question was coming. He certainly could have played tonight if he needed to. We’re going to continue to evaluate this week in practice.”

Mike Cavanaugh went with an 11-7 lineup Wyatt Newpower as the extra defenseman.

UConn Line Combinations:

Spencer Naas-Brian Freeman-Sasha Payusov
Zac Robbins-Jeff Wight-Brian Rigali
Karl El-Mir-Maxim Letunov-Jesse Schwartz

Corey Ronan-Kasperi Ojantakanen

UMASS coach Greg Carvel shortened his bench down to nine forwards in the third period.

Three Hockey East schools are in the Top 20 Providence in 7^th in both polls USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine and USHCO.com and Northeastern 10^th and 11^th respectively.

BC is 20^th only in the USHCO poll.

UCONN first beat UMASS on December 30, 1964, in a 5-4 overtime win after going 0-10-1 in their first 11 meetings. UMASS now leads the all-time series 28-13-3.

UMASS-Amherst star freshmen, defenseman, Cale Makar, won the gold medal with Canada at the World Junior tournament. He was invited but turned down an invitation to play for Team Canada at the PyeonChang South Korea Olympic Games.

Congrats to the US Women’s Team for the exciting, dramatic 3-2 shootout win over Canada in the wee hours of the morning back home. Jocelyne Lamoureaux spectacular move in the shootout was the game-winning goal.

Two more countries will be added to the women’s field in 2022.

The Lamoriello Trophy named after current Toronto Maple Leafs President of Hockey Operations Lou Lamoriello was initiated in 1985 was on display on the XL Center concourse (see photo). Prior his long NHL career he was involved at Providence College and helped form the Hockey East conference.

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