For New England’s Division 1 programs, the past few weeks included the cancellation of the IIHF World Junior Championship in Alberta, the return of regular-season action across the region, as well as some continued impacts of the pandemic on campuses.
This was supposed to be a quiet time!
UConn has been the local team most impacted by COVID-19 protocols this season as their last four scheduled games before the holidays were postponed. The Huskies rescheduled their Hockey East series with Merrimack and a non-conference game at American International before returning to the ice on Sunday.
The extended, continuous break allowed UConn to ease back to game speed after Christmas, which was a change from previous years when the team only had a practice or two before a game. During the 2019-20 season, ninth-year coach Mike Cavanaugh took his team to the Ledyard Bank Classic at Dartmouth.
“It was certainly great to get back and I could see the energy,” Cavanaugh said before Sunday’s 6-3 loss at Harvard, his team’s first game since Nov. 27. “You could tell they’ve missed playing and I think we’ve certainly missed coaching.”
The Huskies dressed a full 12 forwards, seven defensemen and three goaltenders against the Crimson. The lineup included sophomore center Ryan Tverberg, who was one of only three collegiate players invited to Team Canada’s World Junior Evaluation Camp.
Cavanaugh believes that the timing of his team’s pause helped cause the least disruption to the season, with the resumption of league play set for Saturday at Boston College.
“If there was a good time for this to happen, it probably was the beginning of December because you’re going into a break anyway. It just extended our break,” Cavanaugh said. “This would have been tough if it was the first two weeks of November when you’re ramping things up, playing some games and then you’d have to shut it down and play again.”
Michigan sent the college hockey world into an uproar after canceling its second Great Lakes Invitational game with No. 4 Western Michigan due to “health and welfare protocols” without a mention of COVID-19. With five World Junior players, it looked like the Wolverines -- who still dressed 18 skaters against Michigan Tech -- were dodging a tougher opponent.
Only days later, Boston University resumed play with a 5-1 win at Brown in which it dressed just 15 skaters. Sophomore Luke Tuch scored his first two goals of the season to lead the Terriers, who played forwards Dylan Peterson and Logan Cockerill as defensemen.
“We’ve got a tough, gritty group,” head coach Albie O’Connell said. “I think we've had some challenges over the last couple of years, some scars and some short benches, especially last year. This year we’ve had many injuries. We haven’t played that short, but at the same time I think guys were excited because they knew they’d get to play a lot. …
“I think if we had one more guy down, we would have been under the (Hockey East) minimum. We’re psyched we got a chance to play. … If we get 15 (skaters) and two goaltenders, we’d love to play another hockey game.”
The early end to World Juniors -- after three games were forfeited due to positive COVID-19 tests -- could allow players like BU sophomore goalie Drew Commesso (Norwell, Mass.) to return to their teams a bit earlier than expected. However, O’Connell said his team’s status for a weekend series with Arizona State wouldn’t be known until a return to testing early this week.
While one international event is off, the Olympics are on the horizon in February. USA Hockey is likely to invite a number of collegians to join the now NHL-less roster, especially after Harvard’s Ryan Donato and BU’s Jordan Greenway were among the team’s best players four years ago.
At least for now, Greg Carvel hasn’t had that conversation with any of his UMass players.
“If I’m a kid playing college hockey, it’s the last thing on my mind that I’m going to leave this team that I’ve invested all my time and energy in to go play in a random tournament that’s patched together,” said Carvel, whose former star defenseman Cale Makar declined Team Canada’s invite to the last Olympics.
“I’d be shocked if any kid on my team wanted to leave and not defend the Hockey East title or play for a national championship so they can go play in China and get stuck in quarantine over there. … I know it’s the Olympics, but is it really the Olympics this year?”
Whew, that was a lot in a little time. Here’s to hoping for a full return to play this week.
Ledyard landmarks
The final night of 2021 marked an early start to “trophy season” for Jerry York’s Boston College team. A night after the legendary coach earned his 650th win at his alma mater against Mercyhurst, the Eagles added a second piece of hardware to their collection at the Ledyard Bank Classic in Hanover, N.H.
BC, which also won the season-opening Ice Breaker in October, clinched its latest trophy by beating host Dartmouth on Friday to extend a season-long win streak to six games (4-0-2). The two-game victories came by a combined 11-3 score.
York has praised the play and leadership of his seniors -- including second-year captain Marc McLaughlin (North Billerica, Mass.) -- throughout the last two seasons, but the star of the weekend was his linemate, Jack McBain. The power forward scored twice in each game to take home MVP honors and tie both McLaughlin and Northeastern’s Aidan McDonough (Milton, Mass.) for the Hockey East lead with 13 goals apiece.
Sophomore Henry Wilder (Needham, Mass.) was named the tournament’s top goaltender after stopping 26 shots in his second straight win. The Hotchkiss product had appeared in only two games this season prior to the weekend.
The trip to Hanover brought out Hockey East foe New Hampshire’s best as the Wildcats capped off the tourney with a 7-1 consolation game win over Mercyhurst, scoring more than three goals for the first time since the Oct. 8 season opener. Senior Eric Esposito (West Haven, Conn.) logged his first career two-goal game, while the team’s leading scorer Jackson Pierson and Dartmouth sophomore Josh Waters both scored twice and earned All-Tournament Team slots.
Taking care of business
The most convincing win of late went to Merrimack, which scored multiple goals in each period en route to Sunday’s 7-1 win over Brown. The scoring output was the team’s highest since a 10-0 win over Arizona State on Jan. 31, 2016, but the historic Warrior highlight was a plus-7 rating for junior defenseman Zach Uens, which is believed to be a program record.
Junior Filip Forsmark led the team with two goals and two assists, while senior captain Max Newton scored twice and former Dexter Southfield standout Matt Copponi (Mansfield, Mass.) concluded the scoring with his first career goal.
Outside of BU and the Ledyard Classic, UMass Lowell and Providence also picked up non-conference wins for Hockey East over the past week.
THREE MORE STARS:
Hockey East - Patrick Moynihan & Jamie Engelbert, Providence
The juniors carried the Friars in the first-ever game of the Kwik Trip Holiday Face-Off last Tuesday in Milwaukee, combining for four goals and seven points on the way to a 6-2 win over Bowling Green. Engelbert led the way with a natural hat trick, capping off his first career feat and the team’s third this season with a pair of third-period goals.
Putting together his own career game, Moynihan (Millis, Mass.) assisted on all three of Engelbert’s tallies before scoring into an empty net to finish a four-point performance in support of junior goalie Jaxson Stauber, who stopped 69 of the 73 shots he faced in the tournament. Moynihan followed sophomore teammates Brett Berard (East Greenwich, R.I.) and Nick Poisson into double digits in assists.
ECAC - Nick Abruzzese, Harvard
The standouts in Harvard’s 6-3 win over UConn were many as the former ECAC Hockey Rookie of the Year and current junior captain from Slate Hill, N.Y., was one of three Crimson skaters to record three points. He joined sophomores Alex Laferriere and Sean Farrell (Hopkinton, Mass.) with a goal and two assists.
Abruzzese has six multi-point games on the season and now leads Harvard with 18 points on the season, four goals and 14 assists.
Atlantic - Luis Lindner, American International
The freshman defenseman recorded his first collegiate points in the Yellow Jackets’ 5-2 and 4-3 wins over Air Force. Lindner, who wore an ‘A’ for Austria’s World Junior squad last year, has a prior local connection as he played for the USPHL’s Boston Jr. Bruins in 2019-20.
After assisting on junior Jake Stella’s Saturday game-winning goal, the Austrian scored his first career goal in the first period and registered four shots the following night to help complete the sweep. Graduate student Chris Dodero’s second of two assists came on Lindner’s goal.
THIS WEEK’S HAT TRICK:
1. Starting the week off right: The region’s Division 1 college hockey calendar includes games on Monday through Wednesday nights, all leading into the first full weekend of action in the 2022 calendar year.
Merrimack (Saturday game at Yale) and Massachusetts (two games at Union) had weekend plans changed or canceled, leaving room for a Monday non-conference game in Amherst. The Hockey East foes already completed their three-game league slate last month, with UMass winning all three games by one goal.
Following a month-long winter break, Holy Cross faces its fifth Hockey East foe of the regular season when it welcomes Vermont to the Hart Center on Tuesday. The following night sees another Hockey East-Atlantic Hockey clash as Bentley faces UMass Lowell in the first of a home-and-home series, concluding a stretch of nine consecutive days with at least one game involving a New England team.
2. Conference connections continue: Starting Friday, all five of New England’s ECAC clubs will resume conference action for the first time in 2022. Quinnipiac carries a 13-game unbeaten streak into its home meetings with rivals Brown and Yale, a pair of teams that the Bobcats held scoreless in November.
While Yale and Brown will also visit Princeton over the weekend, Dartmouth and Harvard return to home ice against the Capital District pair of Union and RPI.
The Atlantic Hockey slate includes Sacred Heart visiting Niagara for a pair of games and Holy Cross hosting AIC twice in Worcester. The first Hockey East game of 2022 is set for Saturday as BC welcomes in UConn.
3. More non-league highlights: Seven Hockey East teams have non-conference games scheduled over the coming weekend, highlighted by the marquee series between Michigan and UMass beginning Saturday in Ann Arbor. The two teams have never faced off.
Other scheduled games include Boston University hosting Arizona State, Alaska traveling across the country to Maine, Northeastern facing Long Island for the first time, and Merrimack and New Hampshire splitting a weekend with Clarkson and St. Lawrence.
