The maddening inconsistency of the 2011-2012 Massachusetts Minutemen ice hockey team has reached a new level of what-the-fuckery. One does not simply march into Agganis and control the ice for almost the entire 60 minutes against that offense, yet UMass did just that – and proceeded to fall asleep, again, at home to Providence the next night. This weekend, UMass swapped days – they got pasted by the Black Bears on Friday, but held Maine off the board almost entirely last night in Orono save for a highlight-reel goal by noted doucheface Joey Diamond falling on his ass on a wraparound. God we hate Joey Diamond. Everyone knows Triangles are better than Diamonds anyway.

For seemingly the millionth year in a row, UMass has decided to fuck with our patience. Last weekend I was back in “can we move on from Toot yet?” mode. Now, as you can probably guess, I’ve migrated back into glass-half-full territory. UMass holds the eighth and final playoff spot in Hockey East at this point in time, and at least on paper, a very realistic opportunity to hold onto that seed or even move up (more on that in a sec). Call these last couple wins letdowns for BU and Maine all you want, but it’s become abundantly clear that the Minutemen have the ability to win these games – it’s a matter of putting it together on a nightly basis. For all the rumblings about discord between the team and its coach, about lines and playing time, and guys not being mentally tough enough to, oh, not take the first period off every other game, the most important takeaway is that the talent is there. Jack Parker even said so! And when is he ever wrong?

Look, Derek and I witnessed it with our own eyes (more on that later, too). UMass came out on fire in the first, scored on a bad Maine giveaway in the opening minute, and withstood two dangerous Maine power plays. From there, the Minutemen controlled play for the final 40 minutes in much the same way they controlled that BC game, or the pivotal stretches of both BC wins. They have it in them. Why why why why why can’t they do this on a regular basis though?

I kind of liken the Minutemen of the past five years or so to that student who’s smart enough to skirt by but procrastinates like a mofo. (I’m not not saying I’ve been that guy.) The thing is, you can pass exams and ace essays waiting til the last minute to study or write. But what good is it gonna do you if you’re not actually learning? And why put the unnecessary stress on yourself? UMass does the same damn thing. If they could get fired up to play teams like Providence and Northeastern and grab those points early, they could coast into the playoffs and even have a shot at moving up (which shouldn’t be the goal to begin with, but one step at a time here). Instead, yet again, it comes down to the last couple weekends if the Minutemen are gonna give themselves a chance to pull off an upset in the first round. Which, by the way, they’ve proven they could be capable of doing if they can even give themselves that chance.

Technically UMass could finish as high as 5th or as low as 9th. Friday night’s loss officially eliminated the Minutemen from home ice contention, as they now trail Maine by 10 points with 8 points up for grabs. Here’s the standings, and the teams’ remaining schedules:

5. Merrimack 26 pts   @Lowell, vs. Lowell, @UMass, vs. UMass

6. PC 23 pts   vs. BC, @ BC, vs. Lowell, @Lowell

7. UNH  22 pts    @UMass x2, @Maine

8. UMass 18 pts   vs. UNH x2, vs. Merrimack, at Merrimack

9. Northeastern 18 pts   vs. Maine x2, @BU, vs. BU

UMass’s season series with Mack and UNH will be determined in these last two weekends. They’ve lost the breaker to PC and they split 1-1-1 with Northeastern. The second tiebreaker is conference wins, and each team has 7. The third tiebreaker is record vs. the top team in the conference. So UMass holds that if BC is #1, and Northeastern wins it if Lowell is first. UMass is 1-2 against BU and the Huskies lost their only meeting with the Terriers so far. There are three/four-way tie scenarios with 5-8, but they get messy and most of them don’t favor UMass.

Following so far?

So, obviously, the best of all possible timelines is 5th place, which entails UMass sweeping its remaining schedule and Merrimack losing all four. In that scenario, UMass would need PC to finish with less than 3 points in that four-game gauntlet (very possible). If NU and UMass each won out, that first place tiebreaker (Lowell/BC) would come into play again. Also in this scenario, ABC announces it’s pulling Modern Family in exchange for a seven-season run of Community, and Jack Parker and Jerry York are simultaneously trampled by a pack of magical unicorns. Actually, it’s not the most far-fetched thing of all time. Most of it would be in UMass’s hands in sweeping Merrimack, but the other prerequisite (sweeping UNH while Lowell sweeps Mack) could easily happen, and make for a fascinating final weekend.

If UMass sweeps UNH, they’re in good shape. The Minutemen would clinch the tiebreaker, and then all UMass needs is for UNH to lose in Orono on Maine’s senior night, OR take just one point against Merrimack. However, 3 points puts UMass behind the eight-ball still, since it means splitting the season series. UMass then enters the final weekend a point back, and at that point, UNH holds the second tiebreaker of conference wins. (Which sucks, because they’re 0-6 against BU and BC.) Also, please please sweep UNH.

A split and UMass can’t catch the Wildcats unless they sweep Merrimack, again a far less likely scenario. However, Northeastern is still within reach at that point. Maine and BU are both better (and hotter) teams than UNH and Merrimack. UMass and NU play the same number of home/away games (3/1). In this regard, by the way, a win/loss split is much better for UMass than a tie-tie split, thanks to that conference win tiebreaker. Oh, and 0 or 1 points this weekend? That’s gonna put the ball in Northeastern’s court. But it’s important to note that if both UMass AND NU lose all four remaining games, UMass gets in and the Huskies don’t.

Really, it boils down to this: these two games are fucking massive. Lose one or both, and you’re betting on the Minutemen to pull it out of the fire against a team that, while not exactly lighting it up recently, still seems to have their number (not to mention a trip to the Lawler house of horrors). Win both, and both UNH and NU have to step it up against their superior opponents in order to keep UMass out of the playoffs.

It doesn’t need to be pretty. Just get there.

- Max

–

Also…

Derek and I checked the final Hockey East venue off our checklist with our long-awaited visit to Alfond. Of course, in a couple years we’ll have one or two new destinations tacked on as Notre Dame and possibly Mystery Team X (RPI?) enter the Hockey East ranks, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. For now, we’ve finally got enough data to put together a Fight Mass guide to the rinks in our fine conference, and you can look forward to that shortly. Spoilers – Alfond’s gonna rank pretty high on my list. What a fun place.

I’ll get to basketball soon, I swear. Despite the La Salle letdown, Tuesday’s a huge game against Xavier, you should all go, blah blah blah. Oh, and lacrosse is 2-0, and now that I live with someone who knows a little something about the game, I might actually provide some insight this year. Maybe.

Of course UMass would find a way to stick around in back-to-back huge games at Northeastern and Merrimack. And of course they’d find a way to lose both games, one just moments into overtime and the other in the waning seconds, in a scene so reminiscent of opening night (at Northeastern, coincidentally) and so painfully predictable that all you can do is laugh.

And of fucking COURSE! they would go out the next weekend, clinging to their playoff lives, and get their first road win of the season, and first-ever win on the road against a top-ranked team, in a venue that has been a house of horrors ever since it opens its shiny-but-overpriced doors, only to come out the next night, with the same goalie and same lineup, and sleep through the first ten minutes of the game. Oh, and just as a bonus teaser, they rallied down 4-1 and 5-3 to pull within a goal with a few minutes left, and even got a gift power play, and proceeded to fail to take advantage of it.

Four games. Two points, with six more left on the table thanks to continued poor play at the beginning and end of games. UMass could’ve been in a position to leapfrog Maine with a sweep next weekend. But alas, here we go again, six games to go, dogfighting for eighth in a ten-team league for the fifth year in a row. Wait, wait, don’t tell me – they’re gonna win juuust enough, and catch enough lucky breaks, to sneak in as a “dangerous” #8, where they’ll proceed to lose a pair of heartbreakers at Conte Forum again. Pretty sure that episode is a rerun.

You know what’s more heartbreaking? This team, charmed as they’ve been to catch those breaks and sneak in as eighth, might have been better off missing the playoffs in those years. We’ve been tirelessly optimistic that Cahoon and his staff have been on the brink of figuring it out the last few years. It’s getting so very, very hard to keep that attitude. UMass is a snag with the coaching situation now, almost surely without the funds to make a coaching change thanks to the disgusting amount of money Kevin Morris will be getting from the state in order to protect our football team from having to be run any further into the ground by him. Playoffs or no playoffs, there’s no way Toot’s not coaching his final year of his contract unless he retires.

Look, I’ll say it again: Don Cahoon is, by all accounts, a fine human being, a great hockey mind, and a man the community is lucky to have. But it’s time to face the obvious – any other school in this conference would have already fired him by now. Look around the league at the schools that have made coaching changes this year. Hell, Lowell’s in first place. Lowell. And Providence has taken strides since shedding a longtime anchor as well. Northeastern’s had their struggles under Madigan, but they also lost the most talent on the ice in that group. Changing coaches isn’t some kind of magic bullet that’s guaranteed to improve things, but honestly, at this point, what choice do we have? BU head coach/evil Disney villain Jack Parker, who would certainly know about these sorts of things, was bewildered in interviews before and after the game by UMass’s lack of success this season. He thinks they’re too talented to struggle like this. Too fast, too skilled. If that’s not an indictment of our current coaching staff, I don’t know what is.

Next season we lose a guy who’s become an improbable anchor of the blue line in Marcou, and two of our most talented forwards in Syner and Hobbs. Certainly, production that is replaceable. But the vaunted Blaise MacDonald recruiting line has yet to land anyone who looks as program-changing as a Scott Wilson or a Chad Ruhwedel. Certainly, the nucleus that returns – talented forwards like Guzzo, Sheary and Pereira, a much-improved blue line, and three goalies with some playing time under their belts – shows a lot of promise.

But I’ve been saying that for far too long. Beyond next year, how this program positions itself in its recruitment of both players and Toot’s replacement (assuming next year is, indeed, his last) will go a long, long way to determining how soon this program escapes this perennial Groundhog Day-esque spring purgatory.

- Max

P.S. That’s enough negativity for one post. I know I’ve been slacking on articles, but I’ll have my slightly-more-optimistic basketball catch-up article up this week. Keep in mind that it’s a lot more fun to write these after a win.

Ignoring very recent acts of glory, lets not forget the crushing mediocrity that UMass hockey fan experienced in the recent past. In an era of UMass athletics where there are so many high profile steps forward for high visibility sports, our beloved UMass Hockey program seems to be at a plateau. The apex of the Cahoon era came over half a decade ago, and the program has stayed consistently below average ever since. As other sports start showing potential (Basketball) or have new, exciting faces (Fooooootbaaaaaaaaallllllllll!) Hockey sits and waits for Toot to move on before its safe to be excited again.
Lets make something perfectly clear, I have a massive amount of respect for Toot. He took a program that had no identity or culture and built it to the point where the fan base earnestly feels they can make the jump to home ice contention. Toot has graduated players, limited distractions and built a fan base that did not exist before his tenure. However, the last few years has proven that UMass hockey is stuck in neutral, and frankly, there is a definable ceiling to what Toot can do. Toot is not on the level of Parker or York, and doesn’t have the youthful vision of a Dennehy or Tabbed. Toot is an old school coach who is what he is, and he is never going to be the next step that the fans of this program crave. So, like Penn State before all the kid sex, fan wait impatiently for the figurehead to step down before fresh blood comes in and reinvigorates the fan base (Yes, UMass, I said FRESH blood so no Blaise plz).
So yeah, I fully expect this team to make the playoffs barely, then get swept and I expect the same thing next year if Toot decides to ride out his contract, which according to Triangle seems to be the most likely outcome. So, in an era of great excitement for athletics at UMass, the hockey fan has years of the same outcome they have come to know and loathe. Ug.

Meanwhile, in exciting things, The UMass basketball team is also playing tonight. As a blog, we have been extremely cynical about the baskettaball team. Walsh was out at the start of the DK era, Max has been supportive yet skeptical and I nearly resigned from the blog and ruined my friendship with Max over smart ass tweets during a game the UMassHoops.com lost their shit over (please cue the Bob Dylan eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh). But this year has been transcendent for a kinda-sorta-fan like myself. This team is legit, and likable at the same time. Gone are the lifeless, lazy one man teams we have witnessed for the last few years. This team fucking MOVES. Plus, they hustle like a team that wants to win. Not only is it about running and creating fast breaks, but its the little things like diving for loose balls. This year the team does it, while I never saw it in years past. Its hard to point out a single reason for this. Yes, Chaz has been transcendent in his role as Point Guard/Scorer/Heart-and-soul/Good guy tweeter, but its not solely Chaz. It seems that the step away from a SG/SF dominated team to an interchangeable run and gun team has been the biggest change in culture. Yes, mistakes are made, but no longer is there a sense of laziness or an unlikeable player. I LOVE EVERY PLAYER ON THIS TEAM. I love this team, I do. And this is coming from someone who’s first major taste of the new look team in person was the train wreck at URI. Still love them, still love the effort. The entire culture of my UMass fandom has changed. Where I would previously be obsessing over hockey dates and giving slight glances towards the basketball schedule, I now find myself dreading Hockey games for their seemingly inevitable disappointment and feeling strong optimism towards the Basketball team. Yes, they may not be good enough to make the tournament, but at the very least I feel like theres a chance they will win any night, and at the very least they will play hard, fast and entertaining. The team that took a shit on the Mullins court against Dayton last year no longer exists, and damn, it feels good man.

Oh, and Football is going to be amazing. Molnar is the fucking boss. What a charismatic , likable dude. Now THATS something to riot over.

(But seriously folks, don’t riot and make us all look bad you fucking waste of space I hope you and your zoomass culture is systematically destroyed and your highschool quarterback mentality of cool is exposed for the immature garbage that it is. I hope you and your barstool culture is no longer viewed as ok in the lager culture and you become the social pariahs that you deserve to be you fucking scum.)

Here’s to hoping for positive peaceful gatherings for a successful Saturday,

-Matt

Matt and myself are making our sort-of-almost-annual Fight Mass road trip to the only A-10 venue within reasonable (read: sub-3-hour) driving range. The Rhody Rams are coming off their annual victory over Dayton, which now seems to come hell or high water for these guys, but make no mistake – they’re horrible. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

First off, let’s talk about Saturday. Never have I been so happy to have to stand in line for a sporting event. Granted, the circumstances couldn’t have been much better – a top-50 RPI team with a well-known (in college hoops circles) head coach, coming in for the first UMass home game of the semester, with the news of the team’s renaissance finally making its way around (with a little help from that Putney alley-oop on SportsCenter that the school probably paid to get on the air – which, by the way, wasn’t even the best alley-oop in that particular game), with $6 Big Y tickets and with the school pushing the game as hard as possible to the fanbase. I’m especially glad they had the players show up to the Lowell game the night before and have Chaz talk to the crowd, although I was worried for a second that Hansen would put him in the box for two minutes for embellishment. But even the most optimistic UMass fans were talking up 7,000 as a reasonable goal – to get 8,399 for that game is just outstanding, even if the number got revised to 8,398 after they realized they counted Majerus as two people by mistake.

The team’s been pushing/pining/alright, complaining about the attendance for a while now, and when they finally got a good crowd, they sure did make the most of it. The first half was one of the best full halves of basketball I’ve seen in my nearly six years following this program, and one that surely made the older folks in the crowd reminisce about the good ol’ days of Lou Roe and Marcus Camby and, yeah, Derek Kellogg. Precision passing. Knock-down shooting. Stifling defense. The Minutemen raced to a 19-point halftime lead, showing every facet of their improved, fun-to-watch style along the way. If anyone in this crowd was turned off by the bazkettaball of the past few years, they were surely back on board here; if this was the first exposure to it, you couldn’t have asked for a better hook.

And then, sort of predictably, the Billikens crawled back in with some hot shooting, UMass carelessness, and yes, some questionable calls. I know what I just said yesterday about officiating, and let’s apply that here – unlike the hockey team, hoops did not let the calls get them down, and the lead never shrunk closer than two possessions. (Of course, the Minutemen finally a couple of make-up calls in the closing minutes, whereas Hansen’s crew had no such turnaround on Friday, but I digress.) While the team’s had a couple of fall-from-ahead moments this season (Fordham, East Carolina, and Charlotte all come to mind), and the last good UMass team had that same tendency come back and bite them in the ass (the NIT season when UMass blew a massive lead to Charlotte for a first-round A-10 exit that probably cost them a trip to the big dance, then later blew a 10-point lead to Ohio State in the NIT final), the good news is that so far, none of these lapses have actually resulted in a loss. I’d rather them be putting games away earlier, but the fact that the team is playing well down the stretch in this games and regaining control in the closing minutes is probably better practice for crunch-time situations to come.

So, big picture time. UMass is cracking all the “bubble watch” articles this week. They’re projected 14th in Joe Lunardi’s latest ESPN Bracketology, although that’s by merit of their being projected to win the conference (they hold a tie for the best record and the tiebreaker is highest RPI). UMass has their two “easiest” road games this week, which is not to say that either is a given. The Rams, as we said, just beat Dayton, which they do seemingly every year, just as UMass beats them seemingly every year, regardless of whether both teams are contenders, both teams suck, or some combination thereof. In this year’s case, Dayton and UMass are contenders, and Rhody really, really sucks. They hold three – THREE – “double question mark” losses, referring to RealTimeRPI’s mark of disgrace for losses to sub-200 RPI teams. This includes a loss at #301 Brown, a loss at home to Maine (haha, who does that?) and a narrow loss at Fordham. They do hold a double-OT win over Boston College, which just goes to show how bad BC really is this year, and their only home win is against the Chaz-less Hofstra Pride back in November.

All of that being said, rivalry games tend to bring out the best in bad teams. And to the uninitiated, make no mistake, this is a rivalry. These two teams play twice every year, and both fanbases come out in spades for these games. I predict Wednesday to be no different – well, maybe a little different, considering this year’s Ryan Center trip falls on a Wednesday, and this is as bad as the Rams have ever been since I started following UMass. Jim Baron’s job finally looks like it could really be in jeopardy, which is sad because it’s been fun watching his system lose to our alma mater year after year, but alas, his second white-trash son to play for the program isn’t going to be enough to save him unless things change drastically in a hurry. So there’s your caveat – maybe the man’s coaching for his job right about now.

That doesn’t qualify as an excuse for losing this game. There is none. The Minutemen should win this game and win it handily, although I have this sneak suspicion that they’re going to make it harder on themselves than it needs to be. If they lose, of course, you can say goodbye to any chance at an at-large bid barring a magical sweep of the Xavier-Dayton-Temple gauntlet that awaits at the end of the regular season. (Well, that and another date with the Rams, of course.)

Our program has had a habit of ruining potentially-special seasons for their program for years and years. Hopefully this isn’t the year that the Rams flip that script.

-Max

The thing about officiating is that it’s absolutely impossible to judge the job officials do when you’re partial to one team. Maybe others are different, but I find it nearly impossible to watch a sporting event without rooting for one side or the other. If “my” teams aren’t playing, I root based on the standings, for the teams that have already played “my” teams (yes, that does mean BC this year in basketball, don’t shoot me), for the teams with the most likable players or who are playing the villains of the sport in question, and when all else fails, the underdog. To varying extents, for better or for worse, I get attached to the game. And when you’re attached to the game, to one team or the other, you see the game in a different light, and borderline calls become egregious oversights or pointed slights one way or the other. Obviously, the extent varies from “(shaking head in disbelief as LeBron takes five steps on his game-winning layup against some last-place team)” to “WHAT THE FUCK HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY CALL GOALIE INTERFERENCE WHEN HE GOT PUSHED INTO THE GOALIE AND YOU EVEN CALLED THE PENALTY FOR PUSHING HIM INTO THE GOALIE?!!!!!” based on who’s playing. But you have to be real detached from what’s going on to see things with no bias whatsoever.

Now, having said all of that, let’s not sit here and pretend the officiating wasn’t a factor in Friday night’s home loss (home what-now?!) to Lowell for the Minutemen. I’ve seen officiating crews get jeered jokingly from fans skating onto the ice. I’ve never seen an entire arena stand up and boo as loudly as they did Friday night as the zebras skated onto the ice to start the second and third periods. I could rehash the harsh words of our triangular colleague or even mild-mannered Craig Finn lookalike slash veteran hockey beat writer Dick Baker’s even more sternly-worded column (protip: it’s much more fun if you read it in Finn’s voice), but you know the score: UMass rushes out to a 1-0 lead and an 8-0 shots advantage, Lowell gets four power plays in the period (of which one was definitely a good call, one could’ve gone either way, and the other two were as real as Rick Santorum’s election chances), and it’s all downhill from there. Some of the Lowellier of Lowell fans will sit there and mock all they want, but when even their complete homer-to-end-all-homers play-by-play announcer is expressing surprise at some of the calls and – more importantly – the non-calls the other way, something has to be up, no?

But, y’see, here’s the thing – in spite of it all, UMass had a chance to win this game. They trailed 3-2 with plenty of time to go in the third,  put a couple goals past Doug Carr (finally), and, in the rare stretches of even-strength play that were to be found, they dominated play for large stretches of time. What better middle finger to the fates than to pull out a game in which the other team had seven power plays to your two? Nope. The Minutemen couldn’t even get out of their own zone for the final minute of the game to pull their goalie, then let in a bad rebound goal to seal the deal instead. And, as the three-sided one predicted, the mental collapse carried over to the next night, in a 5-2 loss that, while not without a few disagreeable calls, was lost single-handedly by bad UMass decision-making.

Good teams fight through the bullshit. If they’re only playing well at even strength, they make the most of that even-strength time and worry about killing the penalties when they have the lead. You know what didn’t come from a call? The giveaway that led to Lowell’s go-ahead 2-1 goal that really took a lot of the life out of the building. The fact of the matter is, even after one of the night’s worst calls – Phillips going for a “boarding” call in the final five minutes on a play where his man fell down virtually untouched in front of him – the Minutemen had over two minutes left to do something with the post-penalty-kill momentum. They did not. They ran out of gas, despite having a week off while Lowell played its fourth game in eight days. And then they did the same the next night, after storming back to tie a game at 2.

And so here we are, with UMass fighting for its playoff life yet again. Look, Lowell’s got a damn good team this year, but UMass had a chance to pull even (ahead with the tiebreaker) if things had rolled a little differently. But it’s our job as fans to get mad about the calls. It’s the players’ job to find a way to win in spite of them, and definitely to shake frustration off. The Minutemen did neither, and lost Friday and Saturday for those respective reasons. They’ve got a chance to turn things right back around this weekend with their juiciest chance yet at a road win (Northeastern) and another big home game against a ranked team (Merrimack, whom they played extremely close twice last year and, err, we’re not sure what happened in the other game, maybe it got canceled?).

A good showing next weekend and we can chalk Lowell’s sweep up to the fact that they’re the better team this year, plain and simple. But if this turns out to be the beginning of the end, the Minutemen have nobody to blame but themselves.

(And maybe Hansen. But mostly themselves.)

-Max

–

And now, contributor Jarod Hendrickson compares the teams of Hockey East to alcoholic beverages, because it’d be unconstitutional for me to hog all the tenuous metaphors for myself. By the way, now that Derek is basically a figurehead and Matt’s job has absorbed all of his free time, I’m more than happy to accept other contributions…if you wanna write something, message me or our page on Facebook and let me know.

-Max

Contributor’s Corner: The alcoholic’s guide to Hockey East

by Jarod Hendrickson

As students return to campus and mini fridges are being plugged back in, let’s put on
our fun hats and break down what each Hockey East school would look like if they
were a beer. [Editor's note: The captions are courtesy of yours truly. -Max]

Boston University

Sam Adams. Classy, full bodied, and a staple of Boston. A rich history and a national recognition. Not as arrogant as other beers, and is something you respect, even if it isn’t your pint of beer. [And probably the only one I'd admit to drinking on this list. -Max]

don't be silly, BU kids only drink the finest champagne out of escargo-rimmed crystal glasses

Merrimack

Four Loko. What exactly is it? I mean it will get the job done but something just isn’t right, just like Merrimack itself. They’ve only been around since 1947, and the campus
resembles a strip mall. Basically non existent it’s entire history, Merrimack has burst
onto the college hockey scene in recent years, but like Four Loko, all good things will
come to an end. Their “arena”, and we’ll use that term loosely, is a dump, if it were
an animal it would have been shot a long time ago. Overall Merrimack just a fad, and
people will look back thinking, “why did we even bother?”

this guy certainly went to Merrimack. Haha just kidding, nobody goes to Merrimack.

Boston College

Guinness. It’s good, arrogant, and something that must be dealt with a few times a year.
Comparing it against lesser beers really never works out, but on occasion that shitty
light beer tastes better (hey that’s us!). Always leaves you full after going toe to toe for a few rounds.

I'll take the classy high road and not mention blood stained beer cans on the Green Line here.

University of Maine

Bud Heavy…rugged, in the cup holder of diesel trucks, and a staple of an entire state.
Aside from pro Boston teams and a couple minor league teams in Portland..Maine
hockey is all the rage (the “maine” event, if you will) [I will not. - Max] . There might be better, flashier beers out there, but it’s hard to top Maine hockey.

lol "weiser" like "wiser" only less wise because it's Maine

UMass Eastern Massachusetts State College at Lowell

Colt 45. Poor Lowell, literally. The fat, ugly stepsister of UMass is located in the armpit of Mass. Every season of Cops should have been filmed here, they’d have plenty of material. [Again, I think "High on Crack Street" trumps this. A lot. - Max] Lowell hockey may look promising at times, like that occasion where you’re considering partying in poverty with Colt 45, but just avoid it and you’ll be happy you did.

I would have gone with Poland Spring vodka, personally. Or cocaine. Either is accurate.

Providence College

Odoul’s. Providence doesn’t bring much excitement to the table, just like Odoul’s. From the dry campus to the well patrolled parking lot, making tailgating impossible, PC is PG-
13. Although they’ve climbed out of the Hockey East cellar this year, we may have to
bump them up to Mike’s Hard next year.

reminds me of that first scene in 30 Minutes or Less that's almost kinda funny before Swardson and McBride showed up and ruined the rest of the movie

The University of Massachusetts

[redacted] [Jarod wrote something here comparing our fine university to Busch Light. Surely he was drunk or someone hacked his Twitter or the Patriots were showing him the wrong down on the scoreboard or something. UMass is hereby represented by Snake Juice. High-end, VIP, exclusive. An ounce of this will *lit'rally* kill you. Now shut up, I'm tired and I'm drunk and I need more Snork Juice. Yes, I realize it's not beer SHUT UP THAT'S HOW AWESOME IT IS - Max]

it's about to get ca-razz-ey.

University of New Hampshire

Keystone. Oh New Hampshire..where to begin. The nicknames are endless, the south of the north, Alabama with snow, and so on. If New Hampshire was relocated to the
south, no one would notice. [Hey, I resemble that remark! - Max] UNH has won a total of 0 national titles, despite high expectations most years, shitting the bed year after year. Until they break through, and even after, New Hampshire will always be the trailer trash of Hockey East.

look at that horrible road. fitting.

Northeastern University

Northeastern hockey just screams, “Hey, we’re here to party, but don’t bother taking us seriously.” It doesn’t help having to share the city with two perennial Hockey East frontrunners. Northeastern is the first friend you have that reaches blackout status, he’ll be fun at times and entertaining, but in the end no one really cares because his tolerance sucks and he’ll just end up throwing up in your bathroom.

LOL BETTER STICK TO LITE SO YOU CAN IMPRESS THE LADIES DURING NO-TEE OT!!!!1

University of Vermont

Vermont is..different. They’re not on the way to anything, except skiing and endless
bottles of maple syrup I guess if you’re into that kind of thing. [And Canada! - Max] It’s no mystery that UVM’s campus is filled with hipsters, and what better beer to represent them good ole PBR.

or moonshine, if you're Tim Thomas

So there you have it. Enjoy the great sports weekend at UMass, and as always, drink
up.

- Jarod

For hockey, it means two games against the Angry Birds of UMass Lowell. I’ll skip the early-season reverse-jinx gimmick this time around and stick to the fact that Rowdy’s gang has wharrgarbled their way to a 9-6-0 start, a year after occupying the basement of Hockey East and occupying it hard. The University of Massachusetts ran off a five-game winning streak against its estranged crack whore sister coming into the year, then for some reason loaned their uniforms to the AIC Falcons and sent them on a bus to the Tsongas Tscenter in late November for a 4-0 loss that was never really that close. Even in the days of pro agents and scouts at ice level juggling flaming swords to distract Marcou, Irwin and Wellman, I’ve never seen a Minutemen team as disinterested in a game as they did back in November. Those were very bad times.

That, obviously, can’t happen this weekend. The Minutemen are 7-0-3 on their home ice coming into Friday’s showdown. They have a massive rest advantage, having played just twice since Frozen Fenway, while Lowell will be playing their fourth and fifth games in eight days. UMass stands four points back with equal games played in conference, and a sweep, unlikely as it may seem for a team that hasn’t had a four-point weekend in seemingly forever, would catapult the Minutemen past the River Hawks in the standings with the tiebreaker. And this is not the Lowell team that was crushing folks back in November. Lowell was blanked 1-0 by Alex Beaudry and the Friars tonight in Providence, and since edging BC 3-2 in December, they’re just 2-3-0 in the conference, all against teams in the lower half of the standings, and one of those wins was literally handed to them by Northeastern.

The River Hawks’ success has largely come thanks to the emergence of Doug Carr, who (contrary to what Beaudry’s and Rawlings’s mothers would like you to believe) is probably the conference’s best goaltender this year. They’ve also gotten unexpectedly strong contributions from upperclassmen like David Vallorani and Matt Ferreira, who have thrived in new head coach Norm Bazin’s system, and youngsters like Scott Wilson and defenseman Chad Ruhwedel, who seems to be picking up where past Lowell defensive stars like Nick Schaus and Jeremy Dehner and Maury Edwards (when he was still good) left off.

Lowell, unbelievably, entered the night third in the pairwise, thought losing to Providence dropped them into a tie with – hey, lookit that – Boston College. The Minutemen are in 24th, which would be awesome if this was basketball RPI, but where only the top 16 make the tourney, there’s plenty of work to do. Still, UMass’s ability to take advantage of its few quality non-conference foes (Yale and Cornell) puts the team in a good spot. Almost every Hockey East game is good for the pairwise. As bad as the season started, the Minutemen are also just six points out of a home ice slot behind Maine, with three games in hand (and two more shots at the Black Bears on the schedule).

This weekend holds a world of importance for UMass, given the opportunity to improve their standings, improve in the pairwise, drop a hated rival, and get the student base fired up from the very first hockey weekend of the semester. If they can’t get fired up for at least the Friday game, it’s back to the “slightly bit concerned” mode for us. If they come out flying like they did against Vermont, though, and actually get some puck luck this time, and avoid penalties, I’m much more confident in this team’s ability to protect a lead. Lowell’s scored a grand total of three more goals than UMass this year in Hockey East play. Their edge, of course, is on the defensive end, which is why getting the lead early is key.

And would it hurt to win a fucking road game? Jeez. Anyway, the three of us will be there on Friday and Walsh and I will also make the tstrip to Tsongas on Tsaturday, so if you can’t make it to the games (for shame!) we’ll have some commentary for ya on @FightMass. Did I mention there’s no underscore anymore? There’s no underscore anymore, get used to it.

–

Now, ahem, basketball. The past week was down-and-up for the boys. Wednesday at Duquesne was one of those ugly, foul-plagued conference games that we’ve been so used to seeing over the last couple years under DK, and the Minutemen never got into any sort of rhythm in an 11-point loss to the Dukes. The team’s lack of depth with the Sampson and Cady injuries hurt them inside, forcing Sean and Putney to play soft, while Chaz had probably his worst game as a Minuteman, turning the ball over like it was going out of style. And worst of all, we had to endure the worst fucking commentary you’ll ever hear in a radio broadcast from the Dukes crew. And don’t give me that “well how can you complain about a pirated video stream” bullshit, I watched that game with my UMass All-Access Pass somehow, thank you very much. I pay like ten bucks a month for that shit.

And yet as much as I complain about the UMass broadcasts on Twitter and make fun of Maurer’s extra syllables and Hennessey combining hockey players’ first names into their last, at least both of UMass’s announcing crews call games in a fairly unbiased manner. I’ve always thought that, if you take Jack Edwards and Tom Heinsohn out of the equation, we Boston sports fans have some pretty fair announcing crews on both TV and radio, and even those two have Brickley and Gorman to temper their respective outrages. Duquesne, meanwhile, had this trifecta of failure mucking it up in the booth:

1) Old homer who clearly hasn’t left the Pittsburgh area in 60 years, seamlessly incorporating his own random thoughts into what is supposed to be straight play-by-play,

2) Token former player spouting random SportsCenter catch phrases without providing any actual useful observations,

3) “Stat boy” with a voice whinier than John Wallach’s (!) who has never touched a basketball in his life, doesn’t understand how travelling works, and shouts “CARRY!” every time Chaz touches the ball.

When these guys weren’t bemoaning the lack of calls in Duquesne’s favor (even though the fouls were going their way at like a 2-to-1 ratio for almost the entire game), the three of them decided by halftime – based on one bad performance – that Chaz must be the worst point guard of all time (you know, even though he’s 23rd in the nation in assists) and that “this is why Hofstra didn’t want him.” OMG that’s just classic, y’all are hilarious!!1 Hey, remember that last time you guys were in the NCAA tourney in 1977? No, and neither does anyone else. Shut up, dipshits.

…

…Ahem, but here’s the beauty of this season: the “bazkettaball” is the exception, no longer the rule. Case in point – UMass came out three days later and pulled off a good road win at Richmond in front of a surprisingly solid crowd (and I say this because basically everyone else in the A-10 has a solid home crowd by our standards). Chaz bounced back and carried the team down the stretch with some ridiculous passes, everyone played great defense in the second half, Carter had one of his better offensive games, and the team once again got enough offense from enough different sources to win.

No disrespect to Gurley, but part of last year’s struggles (besides the glaring hole at point guard) was that the Minutemen couldn’t develop a consistent second scorer to support AG, who took it upon himself to take too many shots trying too hard to carry the scoring load. Without him, the Minutemen have been forced to spread the wealth (and, again, having a real point guard who himself is a scoring threat has been a massive help in that regard). Rarely this year has one guy clearly been the lone offensive weapon, although Chaz himself is the team’s leading scorer. Some nights it’s Jesse, some nights it’s Putney, but for the most part, the scoring has been very evenly distributed when the team is playing well.

So let’s keep that ball rolling. The Minutemen are 15-5, 4-2 in conference play, and with the season 2/3 of the way down, can rack up 20 wins just by playing .500 ball down the stretch. That said, the competition gets fiercer, with seven of these games against teams in the RPI top 100. The Minutemen can – and kind of need to – win the other three, which are two against a hilariously-bad Rhode Island team and then a roadie against a not-good-at-all George Washington. Of the other seven, here’s what’s left:

Home: Saint Louis, St. Bonaventure, La Salle, Xavier

Road: St. Joe’s, Dayton, Temple

A 20-win season, provided they notch those three cupcake wins, means winning just TWO of these seven games. They can make this process a lot easier on Saturday when Fat Majerus and the Billikens come to town. Last year, the same Billikens got a white-hot three-point shooting performance at home to down the Minutemen. This year’s team has some quality-ish wins against low-level major conference teams like Villanova, Washington, and Oklahoma, but all either at home or neutral-site. They’ve hung around in some tough roadies against New Mexico and Dayton, but are overall unimpressive away from the Gateway Arch, which I should point out is nowhere near the Atlantic Ocean. (Really, the Billikens were trailblazers in this whole “play in a conference that makes zero geographic sense” trend.) This would be by far their most impressive road win. UMass is unbeaten at home. I say these trends should continue.

Saturday afternoon needs to be the biggest home crowd of the season. Needs to. The athletics department has been pimping this game out hardcore to students and locals alike. It’s the first home game after the long break, during which UMass actually won a televised game (albeit on a channel that nobody really gets). It’s a 2:00 start, which gives students zero excuse – you can part Friday, go to the game Saturday, and it’ll be over long before anything is going on again Saturday night (AND it gives the hardcore fans plenty of time to make the drive to Lowell with time to hit up Lowell Beer Works before the nightcap!). The midweek loss against Duquesne probably went unnoticed to much of the student body – in fact, let’s not talk about that game anymore, it never happened, don’t tell anybody. And the Billikens may not be the biggest draw on the schedule (that’d be Xavier, recent struggles notwithstanding) but Majerus is a big enough name and Saint Louis is at least more recognizable than, say, La Salle or St. Bonaventure. And the team is fucking 15-5. It’s time to stop with the negative stigma around this team. As Don Orsillo would say, they’re back and they’re back big.

Hockey fans who scoff at the basketball team ads on the jumbotron, I implore you – just go to the game. Unless you absolute despise the game of basketball, which means you’re not an American anyway so it’s cool. But otherwise, go. Yell your brains out. It’s a fucking Saturday afternoon, no excuses, you’ve got no other plans. Bring other people. This might not be an NCAA tournament team this year – not quite yet – but I think we’re finally, finally seeing the emergence of something special in this Kellogg era. Be part of it, or get left in the dust when the bandwagon takes off next year.

That’s all I got for ya. We’ll try to record another FightCast this weekend, maybe. Until then, enjoy the games. I know I will. It’s about time this program had two teams playing meaningful conference games in the second semester.

-Max

Well, talk about “being like Mike.” Kid went out last night and proved everyone wrong.

The Minutemen blanked Boston College, 4-0, shutting out the Eagles for the first time ever. Yes, ever. BC outshot UMass 35-19, but a good chunk of that came during a third period that UMass spent killing penalties and generally just trying to turtle with that big lead – after all, they’ve blown a lead in seemingly every loss this season. And yeah, you have to think BC was looking ahead to Saturday’s Fenway game against Northeastern, which is, in fact, happening (despite the fact that even NESN isn’t showing it on TV, thanks to their boneheaded move of securing broadcasting rights to a basketball conference that contains only one New England team, which happens to be the consensus worst team in said conference). And yeah, the holes in that BC team are beginning to show (they lost too much on offense and in net, and even the best blue line in the nation can only carry you for so long).

So, all downplaying aside, Mastalerz stopped 35 shots, and while many of them were of the half-hearted variety, he did make a few that would make even Timmy Thomas tip his cap (okay, specifically I’m talking about the one 24 seconds into the highlight reel). And regardless of all the belittling I tried to do in that last paragraph, no UMass goalie had ever shut out BC before. Not Gabe Winer. Not Jon Quick. Not Paul Dainton. But Mastalerz did it in his third collegiate start, and he looked damn good doing it.

Really, the story of last name’s game is that the defense continues to play well, up and down the lineup. Much like the last game against the Eagles, UMass played a smart, opportunistic game, got a quick shot from Allen past Billett, caught a couple breaks off of turnovers leading to two-on-ones, and after squandering a few giveaway chances in the first, took advantage of the same opportunities in the second. Peter “Peterangelo” DeAngelo got the first UMass shortie since the season before last. TJ Syner put a couple of non-empty net goals in the net for a change, and continued to look like a flash of lightning out there from time to time. The key was to get an early lead and really force BC to start thinking toward tomorrow. UMass almost didn’t do that, committing some dumb penalties in the late first period that nearly led to an Eagles lead, but to their credit, the PK continued its recent solid stretch, and UMass converted on that momentum with a second period that has to rank among their finest all season.

So let’s look at the grand scheme of things for a moment. Lowell lost in hilarious fall-from-ahead fashion to Vermont, and suddenly the Minutemen, as “miserable” a season as they’re supposedly having, are just two points behind the supposed River Rat powerhouse, albeit with Lowell holding two more games in hand, but there’s no question which direction these two teams are trending. We could take a defeatist attitude and talk about the race for 8th place, where UMass has a comfy seven-point lead on Vermont for the basement, and thanks to last night’s results, a point up on UNH and two up on Northeastern. In fact, UMass is just three points behind Maine for home ice with a game in hand on the Black Bears. The best part of all of this? UMass has a home-and-home with Lowell, two at Maine, and two at the Bill against the Wildcats, plus another Matthews visit. And there’s still time to catch Merrimack, with that season series waiting to begin. Sure, the Warriors are #3 in the conference, but you have to like that the Minutemen have five of their six meetings with BC and BU out of the way already – and a respectable 2-2-1 record in those games to boot. (Even if it should be 4-1-0 with those two BU collapses. No, damnit, POSITIVE THOUGHTS)

Okay, getting-carried-away aside, Vermont comes in next weekend. Bury them.

- Max

P.S. Hey, oh by the way, UMass plays St. Joe’s at 4 in hoops, in a battle of two top-70 RPI teams. UMass is a bit short-handed with some injuries and needs all the crowd noise/energy help it can get. I won’t be able to make it, but I saw plenty of students in the student section watching on TV last night, so I know y’all are there. You know you don’t give a shit about the Saints-Niners game, and you’ll be home in plenty of time to watch Tebow-Brady II. Go, and be loud. Please?

Jokingly, a few weeks ago, in response to counter-criticism to our blog’s continued (perceived) crusade against Michael Marcou, I promised that, should Mikey score an overtime goal this season, I will rename the blog in his honor for the remainder of the season.

Well, shit.

Frozen Fenway was an absolute blast, despite less-than-stellar sightlines, questionable choice of officials (Bunyon and Keenan? Really?) and the fact that we had to share our beloved Fenway with the unwashed, toothless masses that occupy three inferior state institutions. From our awesome pregame at The Lower Depths (extra props to Skinnier Andy Dwyer, our new favorite bartender of all time) to the moment Marcou snuck that rebound home in the waning seconds, ’twas an experience like no other. Now, Matt and I stayed afterward to watch UNH-Maine, despite our proximity to literally the worst human being we’ve ever encountered in our lifetimes (the supposed Maine fan? or maybe UNH? or Lowell? in a brown hoodie surrounded by people clearly horrified to be associated with him). I think the entire experience kind of college-hockeyed us out a little bit, to be honest. And it did sort of suck how unprepared they were in terms of stocking the merch stands (at the end of the game, all the UMass shirts had long flown off the shelves). But all-in-all, Hockey East and Fenway did a great job hosting an event that none present will soon forget.

All that being said…it’s a narrow win for UMass over a horrible, horrible Vermont team, and the Catamounts had numerous opportunities to steal this one. Especially troublesome is the continued taking of dumb penalties by the likes of Yevenko and Kiley, although I think the former brings more to the table than the latter. Kiley’s penalty was followed by an embellishment call that we, err, didn’t quite care for to say the least, but to UMass’s credit, they survived the five minutes at the end of regulation and start of OT. Of course, having seen the game on NESN replay now, it’s more clear than ever who really won that game for UMass. Tegs made some outstanding stops early in OT to keep UMass in striking range. With all respect to Mastalerz, I think it’s becoming clear that Boyle is the starter and Teglia is #2, albeit maybe less dramatically so than Quick/Dainton were with Meyers. I’m positive Boyle will be in net next weekend against BC, but finally getting that first win has to be huge for Jeff’s confidence.

More than anything, though, this game affirms what the numbers have slowly been hinting at for weeks now: Mike Marcou is no longer a laughing stock, and I was only half kidding when I tweeted during the Providence game that I see Mikey having a huge second half. Yeah, he’s prone every now and again to a bad turnover, and I still vividly remember seeing him commit the worst turnover of all time that somehow didn’t actually lead to a goal during the Harvard game. But he finally – FINALLY – seems to be comfortable on the offensive end of the ice handling the puck. More often than not, his positioning defensively has been stellar. And, when the Minutemen desperately needed at least three out of four points this week before the going starts getting tough again, you could reasonably argue that he earned UMass those three points with his game-saving blocked shot against PC and the walk-off winner at Fenway.

Now, get this – UMass leaves Fenway ahead of two of its fellow participants, as Vermont falls deeper into the cellar and actually leads UNH by a point. Remember, the Minutemen go to Orono for two and host the Wildcats for two, all in a two-week span toward the end of the season that now looms pretty large. I hope it doesn’t come to this, but I could see those four points at the Bill determining 8th and 9th place for UNH and UMass. Here’s the bigger surprise – UMass trails Maine by just five points for home ice (!) with two games to play and a game in hand. True, Lowell lurks in the middle there, but as we’ve seen in years past, the second half is where we will see if these upstarts like Lowell and Providence are for real.

So bring on the second half. Just as this team was left for dead around Thanksgiving after a few abysmal performances in a row, so too did this fanbase – ourselves included – basically give up on Marcou making the most of his potential after his atrocious, injury-plagued junior year. I never expected to say this, but…be like Mike, guys. (Wow.)

- Max