Men's Hockey 3, UMass-Amherst 2: Friars Take Last Breath Against Minutemen

The Massachusetts Minutemen, who had been subtly snowballing their shots on net total all night, were almost all set to fetch a magic top hat –and melt down PC’s fortunes- in the final three minutes of Friday’s game.

 

With 2:55 remaining, Friars’ goaltender Tyler Sims lost what would have been his fourth shutout of the season to Brett Watson’s painstaking conversion. In another 75 seconds of action, PC had sweatier issues when Chris Davis put UMass within one, 3-2, a mere five seconds after the Minutemen had convened on a timeout and pulled netminder Paul Dainton in favor of the old six-pack attack.

 

But for the remaining 100 ticks, Providence reassembled –paradoxically by habitual falling to block any further attempts- and solidified that 3-2 tally, salvaging a precious victory before 2,213 at Schneider Arena.

 

The Minutemen had already taken their turn hibernating in the first ten minutes of the middle frame, wherein the Friars sculpted a 3-0 advantage, despite affording a mere six sparsely distributed whacks at Dainton during that period.

 

An array of unlikely defining facets was on display throughout Friday’s contest. Two teams with ordinarily boundless supplies of graphite ammo instead engaged in a defensive arm wrestling bout with next to no prolonged quality scoring chances and a final shot count of 30-26, Providence favor.

 

In addition, the Friars eclipsed UMass’ pack of season-long radiant rookies –particularly Dainton (27 saves) and prolific scorer James Marcou (four shots, zero points)- while a handful of their own youth crowd concocted the vital 3-goal spurt all on their own. Of the seven PC skaters who appeared on Friday’s scoresheet, five were freshman, the other two sophomores.

 

At first, though, the clenched borders around both blue lines made for a scoreless opening stanza, though with a commanding cumulative 11-4 shooting edge tilting in PC’s favor. At the same time, when they suffered two uncharacteristic disciplinary hiccups, the Friars’ laser-beamed penalty killing square kept the Minutemen shotless on the power play.

 

But on the second sheet, several still-blossoming Friars began to cultivate by means of their forte: grinding. At 3:03, a long arid pair of frosh –Ben Farrer and Jordan Kremyr- jumped a harmless looking shot attempt that had fluttered over Dainton’s stick and behind the cage and thrust it right back in front for sophomore John Cavanagh, who batted it home for the icebreaker, and Farrer and Kremyr’s second and first career points, respectively.

 

Three minutes later, Matt Germain directed a face-off win in the near alley back to Joe Lavin at the right point. Lavin shuffled a few side-steps to his left, made a quick back-and-forth exchange with associate defenseman Cody Wild, and unleashed a snapper into the screening forest. Forward Ian O’Connor absorbed it in the slot and handed it off to Germain, who translated it to his first collegiate goal and a 2-0 lead.

 

Providence further aggravated the Mass Attack’s power play angst during their third kill around the halfway mark. Greg Collins let a close-range slapper by far point patroller Alex Berry bank off his shin and inch out of the zone. Collins made haste to push it along down the lane for a face-to-face encounter with Dainton and nimbly roofed the third Friar goal at 9:57.

 

Afterwards, UMass sprinkled six unanswered attempts, with two of those starting a much more molecular third period that saw 13 shots per side. And when the Minutemen started piling on penalties of their own, the Friars’ extra-man attack was taking nothing more than their PK had authorized earlier. PC afforded no shots over a 5-on-3 stretch late in the second and spread a mere three over as many more opportunities.

 

The Minutemen had dibs on the games last seven registered shots and finally hit the board when Berry –patrolling the near post- whiffed on his attempt to deflect pointman Kevin Kessler’s straightaway bid, but left a rebound for Watson –stationed right along the other pole- to rake under a belly-sprawling Sims.

 

Davis similarly tipped defenseman Mike Kostka’s low-flying snapper from the far boards into the lower right corner of the cage, breathing all sense of life back into the Minutemen.

 

But Sims and Co. readily pumped CPR into the home faithful, handling three more UMass shots.

 

This article originally appeared in the Friartown Free Press

Men's Hockey Log: Friars Hustling After Hawks

As would be expected, the media contingent partaking in Tuesday morning’s Hockey East mid-season teleconference had the word “parity” –or any given synonym- eagerly primed for use like a shiny new Synergy twig. And most every coach answered with a cooperative assessment, a general shrug of league-wide esteem, and a predictable reminder that they are in the heat of the season and engrossed with nothing more than fortifying their own club’s viability.

From here on out, there will be no fewer than four simultaneous conference-on-conference battles on a given weekend. And on the Friars’ part, there is precisely two-thirds of a conference platter left to chew –and nothing more.

With eight points separating first place (Northeastern and New Hampshire) and tenth (Merrimack), Providence is almost in the deadest of the dead-center, as is this weekend’s adversary, UMass-Lowell.

The sixth-place Friars are now two points behind the Riverhawks, who are engaged in a three-way, 12-points-apiece lock for third place with UMass-Amherst and Boston College. For what it’s worth, PC does have three conference games in hand on the Hawks, and by the looks of the current spread, that should offer some sort of booster.

Chances are, even if it’s just a few medium cracks in the ice, the Hockey East stretch drive will naturally break up the Pangaea-like blob that defined the appetizer half of the season. But, as coach Tim Army said in the closing portion of his teleconference time slot, the Friars can only make themselves stand out.

“Most importantly, we’ve gotta win games in order to get there,” he said, referring to the four prized slots in the standings that equal home ice in the best-of-three quarterfinals. “Games in hand are only effective if you win them, so for us, it’s continuing to do what we do to succeed as a program, and each team poses a different challenge.

“What’s most important is that we continue to get better and improve daily.”

While the Friars and Riverhawks whet their blades with a poised passion leading up to Friday’s face-off at Schneider, they are both glancing at the other half of the scouting report and seeing a holiday tournament-fortified opponent.

UMass-Lowell, ranked 13th in the nation as of Monday’s USCHO poll, is an iffy 4-4-4 in regular Hockey East games, but has swept its non-conference slate at 5-0 (with a two-night visit from Minnesota-Duluth still to come in two weeks). They made their latest impression at the Florida College Classic, flicking away Cornell, 3-2, and thumping Maine, 6-0 to take the tourney title and curtain December at a spotless 5-0.

So far, so good, and with a generous helping of gravy if you’re a Lowell fan. Last season, the fatally inexperienced Riverhawks’ were a post-season no-show for the first time since 2000. During that interlude, they made back-to-back appearances at the then FleetCenter in 2001 and 2002 followed by an arid four-year stretch without so much as a single game victory in a conference quarter-final series.

More to the immediate point, the forthcoming Friar series will mean taking the Riverhawks’ conference slate out of the cooler after they had gone on a 4-1 run –in effect compressing a 0-3-4 start- prior to term finals.

Looking right back at them, though, Providence spent its holiday tussling with two CCHA giants at the Great Lakes Invitational, charging up its two highest shot counts of the season and getting a material reward with a 5-3 overhaul of Michigan State. When their calendar Zamboni ran by a few days later, the Friars had finished their December with a 4-1 transcript.

When asked for a word on the weekend match-up during his turn on the line Tuesday, Lowell skipper Blaise MacDonald did not hesitate to cite the Friars’ rapid fire upgrade, as well as the intriguing fact that they have seen rich contribution from blueliners as well as forwards.

MacDonald’s two most obvious pieces of evidence –Cody Wild and Matt Taormina- both notched an assist from their point perch in the last Providence-Lowell battle and have since logged seven and six respective points in six games.

Quick Feeds: Carter Hutton, one of the Riverhawks’ three sophomore goaltenders, has only appeared twice since playing the Friars to a 2-2 tie November 16, but could get the nod Friday after resisting 31 Maine shots for a shutout in the Florida Classic championship…Lowell is tops in the league among penalty killing units with 90% success rate in overall play, which the Friars are the best killers in exclusively conference action at 89.2%. PC also has the best power play conversion rate in Hockey East action at 26.5%. Although, as Army recalled Tuesday, both teams demonstrated exceptional discipline in their last meeting, taking an aggregate three two-minute minors...Two of the Riverhawks only three juniors –Mark Roebothan and Mike Potacco- lead their scoring charts with 15 and 13 respective points through 17 games…Part II of this weekend’s home-and-home at Lowell’s Tsongas Arena has been rescheduled to 4:00 from its initial 7:00 list to allow fans to catch the Patriots prime time kickoff against Jacksonville. The AFC semifinal tilt is set for 8:00 Saturday in Foxboro, televised on CBS.

This article originally appeared in the Friartown Free Press

Men's Hockey Log: Friars Leave GLI With Something To Build On

Even if the shifting paper-based implications of their come-from-behind 5-3 overhaul of Michigan State are hitting them, the Friars continue to refrain from explicit elation. But when they addressed the media, they were apt to label their high-ranking holiday excursion an opportunity to freeze and push along some momentum when their Hockey East schedule hits its January fast-track next weekend.

Leading up to around the halfway mark of Saturday’s Great Lakes Invitational consolation game, Providence had thrust a never-before-seen ambitious offense against the #1 (Michigan) and #5 (Michigan State) teams in the nation, but what wholly fettered on the scoreboard through their first eighty-plus minutes of action.

But after senior captain Jon Rheault knotted the game at 6:42 of Saturday’s middle frame, the Friars thawed out at a glacial pace to nick the defending NCAA champion and forge a .500 (7-7-2) transcript to take back to the coast for the New Year.

The GLI offered a rather hefty statistical upgrade in PC’s last regular season dose of interconference play. For all the intriguing anarchy that defined the first hunk of the Hockey East schedule –which on PC’s part included an uplifting road sweep of a ranked Maine team in November- the CCHA is understandably the talk of the nation.

And on Day 1, the almighty Michigan Wolverines took that to Tim Army’s corps firsthand, dishing out a 6-0 rout, despite the Friar ability to charge up a bewildering inverse shooting edge of 50-21.

In another twenty-four hours, though, Providence acclimated with enough straightforward steadiness to force-feed some vinegar to a Spartan team that closed out its magical 2007 on an 0-2 GLI finish.

Said Army, “I think what we learned is –and we see it in Hockey East- but when you play against good-quality teams, you need to make sure you stay with your program, stay with your game, and we did that.”

Other than the core category –the scoresheet- little was different between the two chapters of Friartown Meets Hockeytown. Right after dumping their largest bushel of shots of the season on Michigan stopper Billy Sauer –who went on to win tournament MVP honors through a double-overtime shutout of Michigan Tech in the championship tilt- the Friars made an exponential climb towards outshooting Michigan State 45-30 on Saturday, increasing their output by six shots by the period.

The no-duh difference on that front was their swift return to effective offensive interruptions. For the third time in the month of December (dating all the way back to the pre-exams tangles with Brown and Union), Providence registered a four-goal period in an earthquake of a third period, outshooting the Spartans 21-12 and outscoring 4-2 in that window.

Additionally, the inherent underdog jitters that came with both matchups failed to shred the Friars disciplinary record. They paid a mere four trips to the sin bin against Michigan –two of those elbowing minors to Greg Collins well after the game had been wrested away- and two against Michigan State. They remained perfectly regimented against the Wolverines until 11:44 of the middle frame and the following afternoon, from the 1:03 mark of the second period onward, their behavioral slate stayed unscratched.

“That’s really important against any team you play,” said Army. “You want to play hard, skate hard, be physical, but you also want to do things with discipline, with composure, especially on the road –I really consider these road games.

“If you give teams (like that) too many power play opportunities, they’re gonna take advantage of it, so by nature we try to stay out of the box, and I think we did a generally good job of that.”

Whatever ultimate grade may be liable given the wild dynamics of their ice-based term exam and their response to it, the Friars were contented enough with the progressed they signified.

Rheault, who acknowledged that he “had never played in an NHL rink before,” will soon lead his associates into a remaining two-thirds of their Hockey East slate in palpable hopes of soon visiting another vibrant building –the TD Banknorth Garden- come late March. If officially commences January 11 with a home-and-home tangle with UMass-Lowell.

When asked if the Skating Friar is at least a little bolder as it looks to that next task, the co-captain said with a sort of low-profile, take-it-in-stride tone, “I think we made our statement, playing against two top teams like that.

“I think (against Michigan) we were a little intimidated, but we know we can play with them, and we proved that against some of the best teams in the country, so when we get back to our Hockey East games, we’ll have that confidence.”

This article originally appeared in the Friartown Free Press