BOSTON — The No. 14 Massachusetts hockey team suffered a likely season-ending defeat against Merrimack in the Hockey East semi-finals on Friday night. The Warriors’ (20-15-2, 10-12-2 HEA) two goals were enough to scrape their way past the Minutemen (22-13-1, 14-9-1 HEA), who failed to score for just the fourth time this season.
Ryan O’Connell, Merrimack’s fourth-line left-winger, scored the game-winning goal for Merrimack three minutes into the third period. Deep in UMass’ offensive zone, Bo Cosman attempted to shovel a pass up the right-wing boards to Charlie Lieberman at the point. The sophomore defenseman mishandled the pass, sending it bouncing to Ty Daneault, speeding into the neutral zone.
With Lieberman trailing the play and Lucas Ölvestad caught in no-man’s-land, a quick saucer pass to O’Connell streaking behind both Minutemen defenseman sprung the forward loose for a breakaway. Michael Hrabal dropped into the butterfly just before O’Connell ripped a shot to his low blocker, beating the recently anointed Hockey East Player of the Year to put Merrimack ahead for good.
“[The puck] kind of handcuffed [Lieberman],” head coach Greg Carvel said. “But he’s a younger defenseman, not a ton of experience, and you can chalk it up to that. But we should have been able to recover … and not give up basically a breakaway. It’s tough when the one goal … was kind of created by us.”
Besides O’Connell’s goal and Caden Cranston’s empty-netter to ice the game with a minute and a half to play, UMass’ back end withstood numerous waves of pressure from the Warriors.
On its third power play of the game in the second period, Nathan King swung a pass across the blue line to Ethan Beyer on the left point. The defensemen swapped positions with King again holding the puck at the top of the offensive zone. His quick pass to Parker Lalonde shifted the Minutemen’s penalty kill just enough to open a seam pass across the slot to Nolan Flamand in the right face-off circle.
The freshman bobbled the pass before whipping the puck towards the crease, right on Caelan Fitzpatrick’s stick. The sophomore captain pulled the puck onto his backhand and tried to wrap it around the left leg of Hrabal, but the junior netminder used all 6-foot-7 of his frame to keep the puck out.
Hrabal made 27 saves on 28 shots, raising his save percentage to .936 and dropping his goals allowed average to 1.98.
“The second half, [Hrabal] has just grown more and more comfortable in the net,” Carvel said. “He just looks so relaxed. He handles rebounds way better than he used to, he handles pucks coming out of the net … this whole second half in the run we were on, he just looked so comfortable in the net, and that’s very comforting for a head coach.”
UMass will now need a significant amount of help to make the NCAA tournament, meaning that its season is likely over. The Minutemen finished the regular season in second place in a competitive HEA off the back of a 12-3-1 second half, and made it back to the conference semi-finals one year after losing major pieces to graduation and the NHL.
“What I’ll remember from this year is that we took the pieces we had and we figured out how to put them all together and win games,” Carvel said. “We lost five really good forwards from last year’s team … We knew [defense] was going to be our strength, and we played to that. We became a very good defensive team with a great goaltender and could scratch enough goals to win games, and tonight we couldn’t find them.”
James Rust can be reached at [email protected] and followed on X @James__Rust.
