AMHERST ― No. 11 University of Massachusetts hockey scored a pair of late goals in the third period to finish off a weekend sweep of Alaska Anchorage with a 3-2 victory at the Mullins Center on Saturday evening. With the victory, the Minutemen sit at 11-4-1 at the semester break, while the Seawolves fall to 6-13-1.
”Obviously a much different game than last night,” said UMass head coach Greg Carvel. “Although the score wasn’t lopsided, I thought our guys played a very good defensive game, we didn’t give up a lot. I was very happy with that part. After last night’s game it can feel a little frustrating that you’re not scoring, but this group has shown numerous times this year they can go into the third period and you can feel on the bench they know they’re going to find a way to score and that’s what it felt like tonight.”
“We had two really good goals there at the end to pull away, but I give Alaska a lot of credit for coming back tonight after last night’s game. This is what I expected. I expected both nights to be like tonight. They play you hard, they make you earn everything and they played much better tonight, I give them a lot of credit.”
Alaska Anchorage opened the scoring 6:28 into the first as Ben Anderson’s outlet pass set up an odd-man rush and Brandon Lajoie dished off to Matt Kinash who finished with a one-timer from the right faceoff circle.
The Minutemen leveled the score at 1-1 moments later. Junior Scott Morrow collected the puck from classmate Ryan Lautenbach and dropped it off for Lucas Mercuri who went bar down for his fifth tally of the season at the 9:25 mark.
The teams would remain deadlocked until 17:06 into the third period when Morrow advanced the puck to freshman Jack Musa who played it to classmate Aydar Suniev off the half wall. Suniev then drove to the net and tucked it past goaltender Jared Whale inside the far post.
Just 55 seconds later, junior Taylor Makar added a third UMass goal, cleaning up a rebound at the top of the crease off the initial shot by sophomore Kenny Connors. Sophomore Cole O’Hara earned the secondary helper on the play.
Alaska Anchorage then capped the scoring with an extra attacker on with one minute remaining in the third as Connor Marritt sent the puck to Riley Thompson behind the net and he found Ben Almquist for the finish out in front.
The Minutemen ended the night with a 38-21 shot advantage and went 0-for-4 on the power play and 2-for-2 on the penalty kill.
Freshman Michael Hrabal logged 19 saves for UMass and Whale finished with 35 stops for the Seawolves.
Massachusetts will be idle until Friday, December 28, when the squad will open the Adirondack Winter Invitational in Lake Placid, New York against No. 18 Cornell at 4 p.m.
