BOSTON – The No. 14 Massachusetts hockey team didn’t capitalize on numerous Grade-A chances on Friday night in the Hockey East semifinals and lost to Merrimack 2-0 to end its conference tournament run. Despite producing 55 shots with 24 of those on goal, none of them bounced past the impressive Max Lundgren.
The Minutemen (22-13-1, 14-9-1 HEA) came into the contest undefeated since Feb. 21, and were on the brink of a national tournament spot. Their offense produced chance after chance in the third period, but the Warriors’ (20-15-2, 10-12-2 HEA) defense and Lundgren stood incredibly strong.
With just over seven minutes left in the game and UMass down by a goal, senior captain Owen Murray poked the puck in the offensive zone for his Minutemen teammates to chase. Václav Nestrašil tapped the puck to Jack Galanek in the slot with options ahead of him.
With UMass’ leading point scorer lurking to his left, he fed the puck to Jack Musa wide-open on the wing with just Lundgren’s 6-foot-5 frame in front. The junior went high glove side, but it wasn’t enough speed and precision to get the puck past one of the top netminders in the country.
“We just couldn’t find a way to get one past their goalie, who played particularly well,” the Minutemen’s head coach Greg Carvel said. “I thought we had enough chances to score. Both teams play the game heavy and do a good job staying above the puck. We had chances to score. It’s not like we didn’t have chances. It’s a 1-0 game. We’ve had three or four of these in the second half. They are coin flips, and we were just on the wrong side tonight.”
In the contest, the Swedish goaltender reached 1,060 saves, which now leads the NCAA in total saves. Lundgren led the Warriors defense past both the No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the conference and single-handedly revived his team’s back end.
“We haven’t been great in our own end even though we’ve been on a run,” Merrimack head coach Scott Borek said. “I thought tonight we were much more aggressive and much more urgent.”
UMass had a point-blank chance with three minutes left in the first period. Filip Nordberg corralled the puck to the left of Lundgren with the game scoreless. Instead of finding one of his teammates, he fed the puck to a lurking Nestrašil with a teammate to his left and a discombobulated Merrimack goaltender in front of him.
The Czech native fed an 8-yard pass to a wide-open Musa, who had an open net in front of him. Instead of feeding it into the gaping hole, the Florida native sent it wide.
“I thought we had enough chances to score,” Carvel said. “Their goaltender played very well … I liked our game. I thought we had enough chances. Our players had pucks on their sticks to score goals.”
In the last four minutes of the game, the Minutemen produced chance after chance through their forecheck and puck movement, but the invisible lid on the net kept UMass from getting back to the final.
The Minutemen also failed to convert on their two power play opportunities. UMass’ issues on the man-advantage spanned the whole year, giving them a No. 35 finish in the nation for power play percent.
The Minutemen committed mistakes throughout the contest, just like Merrimack. However, the Warriors capitalized and did what they needed to do defensively to win the game.
UMass will hope for results in other conferences to go its way to increase its NCAA Power Index in the hope of a return to the NCAA Tournament. A loss to No. 24 Merrimack, though, will make that incredibly unlikely. The Warriors will head to the HEA Finals for the third time in their history to face either Boston College or UConn.
Ezekiel Altman can be reached at [email protected] and followed on X @EzekielAltman.
