As I settled in for a Bruins-Leafs playoff game, my cell phone lit up. Caller ID revealed John, a high school bud and former pitching ace at Amherst College. I picked up. He needed to talk Frozen Four, and demanded an answer. “How in the world did UMass land Cale Makar in the first place?” John isn’t much of a hockey fan, but he knows first-hand that UMass is no brand name in the world of college pucks. “Why not BC, BU or Michigan?”
Slightly embarrassed, I admitted to not knowing the whole story. The common narrative is that new coach Greg Carvel inherited a sinking ship at UMass back in 2016, one with a toxic culture and a bare cupboard. Bare, with the exception of the greatest college player since Paul Kariya (apologies to all you Jack Eichel fans). The story has it that “Carvy” wisely connected with the Makar clan within minutes of taking the job, re-staking the UMass claim on Cale. But it was the prior regime, under much-maligned coach John Micheletto, that did all the heavy lifting. They were the ones who convinced this once-in-a-generation player to commit to UMass. This story should be part of college hockey’s historical record, but it had been previously untold.
The next morning, I reached out to Gary Makar, Cale’s dad and his de facto guidance counselor. He’d been in a much-publicized hockey frenzy since the Frozen Four, but still found time to call back en route to the Calgary airport. He set the record straight.
“Our very first contact at UMass was with Joey Gasparini,” said the elder Makar. “Joey had been watching Cale right from Midget days.”
Gasparini? If that last name is familiar to college hockey fans, it should be. His old man, Gino, belongs on the Mount Rushmore of Western hockey coaches, leading North Dakota to three NCAA titles in the 1980s. Little Joey became an outlier, bolting the WCHA for Burlington, Vermont, where he played and coached for UVM in the early 2000s, before heading over to the UMass staff in 2012.
Let’s get this straight: A member of Western hockey’s royal family upended the balance of power in Hockey East? This was a story worth telling. Tracking down Gasparini’s number required a call to Grand Forks, which is only fitting. My source was the Grand Forks Herald’s intrepid reporter Brad Schlossman. I learned from him that he had just broken the Gasparini story. No surprise if you know Brad’s work. But Gasparini’s tale has plenty to resonate with New England readers — he’s now an adopted member of Red Sox Nation who swears by Tom Brady’s six rings.
How Gasparini delivered the legendary Cale Makar to the Commonwealth’s flagship university is a tale deserving of a vaunted place in New England’s sports annals. It also was one of his final acts in the hockey world. Joey left coaching less than a season after getting Makar to sign his official letter of intent. He is now an orthopedic sales rep whose beat is the northern reaches of New England.
Geography and culture are critical elements to the tale of landing Cale. Most know that he comes from Calgary, smack in the heart of the Western Hockey League, an elite junior circuit that prides itself as a fast track to the NHL. Cale grew up watching the Calgary Hitmen of the WHL and was drafted by the Medicine Hat Tigers. The aura of the league known as “The Dub” was impossible to ignore.
“Major junior is the ‘Big Show,’ ” said Gary Makar. “It’s huge. It’s a big hype machine. They do a great job of marketing, and it’s a great league.”
The elder Makar knows hype; he’s an advertising and marketing executive.
But there’s a big drawback to playing major junior — it’s incompatible with U.S. college hockey. Playing in any of the three major junior leagues in Canada contaminates the player’s NCAA eligibility. College hockey has become a viable alternative to major junior for NHL prospects because it provides an academic safety net. Precluding college was a dealbreaker for the Makar clan.
“For us, we did the homework,” said Gary, a big fan of the UMass business curriculum. “It’s not easy to do, but you decide this is the route you’re going to take.”
So 16-year-old Cale Makar, a bit of a late bloomer physically, opted for the Brooks Bandits of the Alberta Junior Hockey League (AJHL) instead of the WHL. The AJHL is a Tier 2 junior league, one that allows players to maintain their NCAA eligibility. Cale joined Brooks at the end of the 2014-15 season, a season during which young Gasparini had been tracking Makar during his final year as a AAA Midget.
The timeline is critical in tracking this story. Cale was a 16-year old in that 2014-15 season in which he played both Midget hockey for hometown Calgary and then latched on with Brooks. Gasparini, a recruiter for UMass at the time, was a proverbial “rink rat” in western Canada. He had a chummy relationship with Cale’s junior coach, Ryan Papaioannou, which proved to be advantageous. They shared the view that the gangly Makar had an upside that was scary good.
“He was weak, but very, very gifted,” said Gasparini of the 16-year old Makar. “He hadn’t grown into his body, which was normal for kids that age.” Without being intrusive, the affable Gasparini went to work on this project.
“We probably met Joey three, maybe four times at rinks,” said Gary Makar. “He was a very personable guy, just a real good guy.” The feeling was mutual. “Gary’s a hockey-centric guy, awesome person,” said Gasparini about Cale’s father. “He came up and found me a couple of times. Right from the get-go, he was interested in school. Just good people; they care what’s best for their son. There’s no B.S. there. Sometimes there is with hockey parents.”
Early spring of 2015, Makar made the jump from Midget hockey to junior, and went on an extended playoff run with Brooks. Although Makar managed only seven points in 20 playoff games, there were moments where Gasparini saw a glimmering future. “During the playoff run I was like, ‘Man, if he’s doing these kinds of things now, wait until he grows into his body!’ ”
Gasparini facilitated meetings with the current UMass coach, Micheletto, and began a subtle full-court press after the season ended in 2015. Makar wouldn’t be able to fly under the NCAA recruiting radar much longer.
“I had been pressing the recruiting as hard as possible, engaging as much as I could within the rules,” said Gasparini, “because as soon as he got into the fall, the recruiting game changes.” Gasparini, weaned in the old WCHA, knew first-hand how those schools swarm elite NCAA prospects from western Canada.
“It’s tough to go against North Dakota, Denver and Duluth, guys who have very deep roots in Alberta,” Gasparini said. “I knew that in order for us to have the best opportunity to get him to say ‘yes’ to UMass, we had to get it done prior to getting into the fall.”
In July 2015, Cale joined an Alberta league travel team that toured the Eastern United States, with stops at several colleges, including UMass. Incredibly, Cale visited most of the brand-name schools in Hockey East but remained virtually anonymous.
“There were no other formal offers,” said Gary Makar, referring to big-name schools like BC and BU. “Not at all.”
Cale was enamored with the spacious Mullins Center, its exquisite facilities and the personal attention lavished from both Gasparini and Micheletto.
He still was uncommitted at the end of the summer, just as Brooks was commencing the 2015-16 campaign. Prior to a preseason tournament in the previously anonymous town of Okotoks, Alberta, Gasparini and the Makar clan closed the deal. “We committed to UMass in August, in the lobby,” said Gary.
In the Makar family, a handshake is ironclad. Two months later, 17-year-old Cale had transformed into a premier NCAA prospect, and the Makars honored their commitment. They faxed over Cale’s National Letter of Intent (LOI) to UMass. This ensured that the fortunes of the Minutemen would soon undergo a sea change.
It turns out the LOI made new coach Carvel’s job much easier when he replaced Micheletto at UMass in the summer of 2016. A college coaching change represents a loophole for schools looking to poach previously committed student-athletes. “Having that LOI signed was a really big component,” said Gasparini. “That gave the incoming staff all the time in the world to cultivate their own relationship, do their own due diligence to reinforce to Cale that it’s the place for him.”
Which is exactly what Carvel did, turning the securing of Cale Makar into Job One of his tenure. Shortly thereafter, NCAA sharks with big fins began circling the waters. “As soon as the coaches changed, I can’t tell you how many phone calls we got,” said Gary. “We just said, ‘You know what, we’re all good.’ ”
And the rest, as they say, is history. Joey Gasparini is now out of the hockey profession, racking up sales with his new team at Smith and Nephew orthopedics. He listens to WEEI radio on his mobile device to keep current on the Sox and Pats while making his rounds throughout northern New England. On Thursday nights, he heads over to venerable Gutterson Field House for beer league skates with other UVM alums, and will be involved in the fledgling hockey careers of his daughter Adrian (7) and son Vinny (4).
He’s happy to have recruited the lion’s share of this year’s Hockey East champs, Western Canadian kids like Makar, Matt Murray and Kurt Keats, along with local star John Leonard (Amherst, Mass.). He is not a bit sore that he is never mentioned as one of the architects of that remarkable UMass team. “I don’t need the reinforcement,” said Gasparini, “I don’t need to seek out, ‘Look what I did back then.’ I take some pride in the fact that I did a pretty good job, and I’m happy that some of the guys I brought in are doing great.”
So to answer my pitching buddy from Amherst College on how the legendary Cale Makar came to UMass, of all places, you can say he was recruited by a guy named Gasparini. That fact might be able to win you a bet at the local pub.
