BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings
HARTFORD, CT – All the game’s scoring occurred in the third period as the UMASS Minutemen came away with a 2-1 victory on Friday over the UCONN Huskies at the XL Center.
The game-winner came off Jason Lopina’s stick as UMASS kept pursuing a loose puck after it was blocked on the left wing as Ryan Wheeler made the block. Still, Lopina swept in unchecked on his forehand scored his eighth goal. He’s part of the potent UMASS first line and followed up on the loose puck with no back-pressure and scored at 16:07.
UCONN did get a late power play goal of their own with 1:08 left. It was one of their few offensive forays and net-front plays for the night as Jachym Kondelik and Vladislav Firstov were on the puck and created a logjam.
The puck came loose to Turnbull, who came out of the traffic fired his ninth goal past UMASS Matt Murray who had lost his stick in the milieu of players, he sought a review, but the late tally counted.
UMASS was able to take the lead as UCONN as they took three straight penalties early in the third.
”We took too many penalties. We were still in the game in the third period. You give a power play that three-in-a-row (in UMASS). When you do that, you’re asking for trouble,” remarked UCONN Head Coach Mike Cavanaugh of his troops.
Ryan Ufko, a right-handed shot, on the first UMASS power-play unit was left unchecked at the right point. He took a pass from the leading scorer on Bobby Trivigno, stepped into the puck, and fired a rocket of a shot for his fourth goal on the power play at 7:46 for the first goal of the contest.
For most of the night, UCONN was either too selective or when presented with a chance, either missed the net altogether or just didn’t capitalize on opportunities.
“We didn’t get enough (shots) at their net,” Cavanaugh said as they had a mere twenty shots with few secondary chances at Matt Murray. “We didn’t get enough pucks to the net or traffic around the net.”
The two teams engage in a rematch tomorrow night at 7:30 pm at the Mullins Center and UMASS improved, but fell to second place behind UMASS-Lowell is 12-5-2-3 in Hockey East action overall improve to 17-9-2 while UCONN fell 16-12-0 overall and 12-7-0 in conference falling to fourth place.
The two teams remained deadlocked at zero after 40 minutes of play.
“UMASS was the better team tonight, I thought in a lot of areas,” remarked Cavanaugh.
LINES
Firstov-Kondelik-O’Neil
Gatcomb-Evans-Turnbull
Schandor-Schlaine-Tverberg
Veilleux-Capone-Wojciechowski
Wheeler-Rees
Berger-Spetz
Kinal-Flynn
Gourley
Hanson
Terness
SCRATCHES:
Cassidy Bowes
Gavin Puskar
Ryan Keane
Austin Metcalfe
Matt Pasquale
