by Anthony Travalgia/CHN Reporter (@atravalgia)
(photo: Matt Dewkett) (photo: Matt Dewkett)
BOSTON Massachusetts’ season was a tale of two halves.
It entered the holiday break an even 9-9, allowing 3.20 goals against per game, while scoring 2.80. Just three of those wins came against Hockey East opponents, two of them in regulation.
Once the calendar flipped to 2026, so did UMass’ season. It started scoring more — averaging three goals a game — and it allowed fewer goals, cutting that number down to 1.40, going 12-3-1 in the process and earning Hockey East’s second seed in the playoffs before a win over Northeastern sent UMass to the semifinals.
Two of those losses were 1-0 defeats, the third a 3-1 loss to Massachusetts-Lowell, a game where Lowell needed an empty-net goal to extend the lead.
In other words: UMass needed to be nearly perfect in the second half if it wanted to make an NCAA Tournament run, and nearly perfect if it wanted to advance to Saturday’s Hockey East Championship, something often easier said than done.
UMass learned that the hard way after its season came to an end with a 2-0 loss to Merrimack in the Hockey East semifinals.
“We just got used to playing with desperation and when we got to the playoffs, it was nice to say you guys don’t have to do anything different. Let’s just try to do it better than we’ve been doing,” UMass coach Greg Carvel said.
“We had to get real desperate in January. But I thought when we played UConn a couple weeks ago, that that really felt like playoff hockey. We had to beat them and claw over them to get at them in the rankings. And same with [Boston College]. We were playing games that meant a lot, and we’re finding ways to win games. Tonight, we just couldn’t.”
Every team’s “perfect” looks different. UMass’ is built around strong defense efforts, stout goaltending and just enough offense to get by.
“We took the pieces we had, we figured out how to put them all together and win games, and we lost five really good forwards from last year’s team. We knew we were gonna have a hard time offensively,” Carvel said.
“[Offense] was not going to be our strength. We knew defensively was going to be our strength and we became a very good defensive team with a great goaltender, and could scratch enough goals to win games, and just tonight, we couldn’t find them.”
That great goaltender is Michael Hrabal, whose season looked a lot like his team’s. He was considered one of the league’s top goalies last year, but struggled in the first half of this season. His coach called out his habits. In the second half, his save percentage was over .950. He was all-but-unbeatable. Unfortunately, he was beaten once Friday, and that was all that mattered.
UMass had 15 shots through two periods, 14 total in the third. It struggled to generate chances from high-danger areas.
“Our best players had pucks on their stick to score goals,” Carvel said. “Just couldn’t find a way to get one past their goalie, and he played particularly well.”
Carvel was able to identify flaws in UMass’ game. From there it was instilling that belief in the team, that belief that they could climb back up the standings, spot-by-spot. It’s what drove UMass to be the strong group it was in the second half.
“I had to convince the team, get them to trust me that I knew what was going to be the answer, what the answers were going to be,” Carvel said.
“They went home for Christmas, and I think they went home with a little bit of belief, and they came back and I said, ‘You guys, I watched the video, I’m telling you, we just do this, this and this, I’m telling you, we’re gonna flip all these games.’ They bought into it and we got really good defensively, really focused on parts of our game that that were causing these issues and then Mike [Hrabal] just became otherworldly.”
In UMass’ first 18 games, Hrabal appeared in 11, going 6-5 with a 3.00 goals-against average and a .897 save percentage.
From Jan 1. through Friday’s loss, he appeared in all 18 games going 13-4-1 with a 1.33 goals-against average and a .959 save percentage.
“This whole second half, he just has grown more and more comfortable in the net. He just looked so relaxed, handles rebounds way better than he used to, handles pucks coming out of the net,” Carvel said. “This whole second half and the run we were on, he just looked so comfortable in the net.”
The two and a half month grind of playoff-like hockey finally caught up to UMass. It was nearly perfect until nearly perfect was no longer enough.