Every championship team needs players like Colin Felix.
The UMass senior may not dangle his way up the ice and rip the puck under the bar or feed a teammate for a backdoor goal.
But he can be counted on to do the dirty work. He’s a shutdown defenseman who competes on every shift and makes opponents pay a price around the net and along the boards.
Felix arrived just in time for the Minutemen’s first run to the Frozen Four in 2018-19, but it almost didn’t happen for him.
He committed to UMass in 2015 under the previous coaching staff. When Greg Carvel took over as coach in 2016, he was not sold on Felix.
“I went to watch him play, I can’t remember where, somewhere in the USHL, and I came back to (assistants) Jared (DeMichiel) and Ben (Barr) and said, ‘I’m not sure he’s going to fit our mold,’” Carvel said.
“I wanted mobile defensemen, offensive-minded. Jared and Ben just kept saying and his coaches, everyone we talked to, said he’s the highest-character kid we’ve ever coached. At that time we needed that.
“In our first one or two recruiting classes we were trying to get as much character as we could. Thank God I listened to Jared and Ben. He’s a big part of our identity."
For a program looking to build a winning culture from the ground up, Felix turned out to be an important addition.
“He plays a hard style. I give him credit. He’s a shutdown defenseman who’s always out there looking for offense. He’s a leader. He’s a great kid, someone I connect with really well. He’s like (fellow senior) Anthony Del Gaizo. Not necessarily the most gifted, but boy they find ways to win games for you. They are heart and soul.”
For his part, Felix appreciated the coaching staff’s honesty and transparency during the process that eventually paid off in his opportunity in Amherst.
“I knew that due to the coaching change — obviously, I committed under the old staff — that they were going to have to go with their guys, make some changes,’’ said Felix.
“They did a great job keeping me in the loop. I knew I wanted to be here at UMass. I just had to build relationships with the new staff.
“They believed in me, gave me an opportunity to succeed. I felt like I did a good job just putting my head down and working very hard and listening to them and growing within the system. I credit them a lot for believing in me. I can’t thank them enough,” Felix said.
“I remember my dad telling me from the time I was little, his quote was, ‘We are fighters.’ He always drilled that into my head, both my brother and I, to work hard and when the opportunity is given to you to seize that opportunity and work as hard as we can because that’s the only thing you can control.
“Both the coaching staff and the leadership group here do a really good job of getting our guys into that mindset. If we can have a physical presence and work together as hard as possible, then things seem to go our way,’’ he said.
Growing up in New Jersey, Felix set a goal of playing competitive hockey and getting a good education. He looked at a number of prep schools before settling on St. George’s, overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, in Newport, R.I. “It was pretty hard to say no after seeing that beautiful campus,” he said.
“I spent three years there, some of the best years of my life, and got to meet a lot of cool people. I lived away from home when I was 14 years old, so I had no choice but to grow up fast. My mom obviously wasn’t too thrilled with me moving away, but it ended up working out.”
He was selected by Kitchener in the 2015 Ontario Hockey League Draft, and attended one of their camps, but stuck with his plan to take the college route.
From St. George’s, he moved on to Janesville of the NAHL in 2016-17 and Madison of the USHL in 2017-18, where he was third in the league in penalty minutes with 166. Then it was on to UMass.
“Coming in as a freshman, I knew that Carv had plans to turn the program around and they had already started the year before me with Cale (Makar) and Mario (Ferraro) and those guys as freshmen,’’ Felix said.
The turnaround didn’t take long. After losing in the national championship game in 2019, the Minutemen reached the top of the mountain in 2021, taking home the program’s first national title. Now they are aiming to stay there.
“(The coaching staff) has done an amazing job getting guys to buy in not only to the systems but to the culture here. To believe in each other and believe in the success we could have leaning on each other. The success comes from guys buying in, working hard and coming to the rink every day with a good mindset. I can’t be thankful enough to be a part of it for four years,” said Felix.
It’s been a magical ride and, with the postseason dead ahead, it’s not over yet.
“We knew that coming into the season we’d have that target on our back. Everyone wants to come in and knock off the top dog. We kind of tried to change that mentality to put the chip back on our shoulder.
“Carv has always said, make them rip it out of your hand if they’re going to take it, so that’s been our mentality coming into every game,’’ Felix said.
