The first home-and-home of the season for the No. 12 UMass hockey team comes against none other than No. 18 Boston College.
The Minutemen will head east to Chestnut Hill for the series opener on Friday, Nov. 14, before both teams will reconvene at the Mullins Center on Saturday, Nov. 15 for the finale.
UMass has only amassed one win in its previous 10 contests against BC, which occured last February in the Minutemen’s 3-2 victory at Conte Forum.
But these aren’t your father’s Eagles.
Boston College lost significant pieces from last season’s 27-win squad to the NHL (Hobey Baker finalist Ryan Leonard and Mike Richter Award winner Jacob Fowler, to name a couple) this past offseason and haven’t seemed to have found a rhythm yet in 2025-26, posting a 4-4-1 record.
“I get guilty of not doing the same thing every week,” UMass head coach Greg Carvel said when asked how he’ll prepare his team for BC. “I think that’s the best thing for everybody. It doesn’t matter who we’re playing and exactly what their styles are, our process needs to be tighter and that’s up to me.”
Boston College swept Vermont in Burlington a week ago by a combined score of 7-1, but entered the series against the Catamounts losers of three straight.
The Eagles are a middle-of-the-road team in goals-scored, goals-allowed and in special teams through nine games, but their total save percentage is their most glaring outlier at .894, putting them 19th-worst in the nation. Northeastern’s .956 save percentage leads all Division I teams.
Freshman Luka Cloutier has earned the lion’s share of the starts for BC, registering a 4-2-1 record with a 2.01 goals-against average and a .914 save percentage.
Speaking of goalies, UMass netminder Michael Hrabal is still out day-to-day, per Carvel. The junior goalie did not play, or even dress, for either game against then-No. 6 Maine last week.
Even though it was a week after Halloween, the Minutemen had their most Jekyll-and-Hyde set of performances in quite a while in their split with the Black Bears on Nov. 6-7.
Maine dominated UMass in every aspect in the first game last Thursday, winning, 6-2, then Minutemen junior goalie Jackson Irving pitched a shutout with 37-save gem on Friday.
“I remember saying after the [first] game, and on Friday morning, ‘the game plan hasn’t changed one bit, not one little bit,’” Carvel said, “we just got to decide to show up and compete. So that’s all it was.”
Junior Bo Cosman is likely to return to the UMass lineup against BC, according to Carvel, after being held out of the last six games with an undisclosed injury. The Georgia native should automatically improve the Minutemen’s compete level, should he dress, as the 6-foot-3 forward emulates the Energizer bunny whenever he’s on the ice.
“You have to be able to skate and if you can skate really well, it makes you an effective player,” Carvel said. “Bo plays a courageous style and we’ve been missing that. I really do think that in the last two weekends, not having him in the lineup has taken a little bit out our identity because he has a lot of speed.”
In five games played, Cosman has compiled two goals and an assist.
Sophomore and Boston Bruins’ 2025 first-round draft pick James Hagens leads the Eagles in points with nine, while Hagens and fellow sophomores Jake Sondreal and Dean Letourneau (Bruins 2024 first-round pick) are all tied for the team lead in goals with three.
Junior Jack Musa and freshman Vaclav Nestrasil have each surpassed double digits in points with 15 and 13 points, respectfully, for UMass.
Puck drop for both games are set for 7 p.m.
Saturday’s game at Mullins also will include a Teddy Bear Toss, in between the first and second periods.