In return to Hockey East play, UMass awaits No. 11 men’s hockey

The day after a whirlwind game against No. 5 Harvard University, which the No. 11 Boston University men’s hockey team came back to win 6-5, BU head coach David Quinn took things a bit simple in practice.

“[Practice was] short,” Quinn said Friday. “We just talked about a couple things — that we need to tighten up and get guys out moving around and just getting ready for a huge league game.”

That league game will happen Saturday, when the Terriers (10-6-3, 4-3-2 Hockey East) play host to the University of Massachusetts Amherst. UMass (7-9-4, 2-4-4 Hockey East) will be BU’s first Hockey East opponent in over a month, and crucial points will be on the line. Quinn said the team hopes to be in a better groove now that a shaky game is out of the way.

“We’ve got to do a better job if we want to make a run here. We’ve got to start now,” Quinn said. “We’ve played nine league games and we’re almost to the halfway point in the league and we’re one game over .500. That’s not going to get you far in our league, so this is a huge game for us.”

Though some of BU’s top players returned for the game against Harvard (8-2-3) Thursday after the World Juniors Championships, some returned within the 24 hours before the game, including three of BU’s six defensemen who suited up.

While fatigue could have played a role, Quinn called the team’s defense as a whole a “major” issue in the win over Harvard, particularly when the Crimson outshot BU by a margin of 18-2 in the first period.

“Those guys got better as the game went on, as our whole team did, obviously, so you gotta understand the situation,” Quinn said. “So not that you’re really making excuses for people, but you’ve got to give them an opportunity to kind of play through the time change and all that stuff. Those guys will be in the lineup [Saturday] night.”

The team’s leaders stepped up for the win, however. Senior forward Ahti Oksanen, despite suffering an upper-body injury right before break, returned to the lineup Thursday and had the game-winning goal for the Terriers. Senior assistant captains Danny O’Regan and Matt Lane both had multi-goal games, with Lane scoring his third and fourth goal of the past two games.

Senior goaltender Sean Maguire is slated to start in net Saturday, coming off back-to-back wins against some of the nation’s best teams in Harvard and No. 2 Quinnipiac University.

“He’s beaten the top two PairWise teams on the road back-to-back, so that’s a good reason to play him,” Quinn said.

For UMass, however, the goalie situation has been nothing short of uncertain. Sophomore Henry Dill got the first start of the season against Colorado College, but freshman Nic Renyard overtook the starting position. He has 13 of the squad’s 20 starts on the season, though he didn’t play in either of the Minutemen’s past two games.

Junior Alex Wakaluk got the nod in those contests instead and allowed just four goals on 61 shots against for a .930 save percentage, guiding his team to a 2-1 overtime win against the United States Military Academy last Saturday and an overtime loss to No. 12 Yale University Tuesday.

In both of those games, the Minutemen found themselves trailing and rallied back to knot things up. Those close games have been a predominant part of their season, as UMass has taken teams to overtime eight times, posting a 2-2-4 record in those games.

In keeping with the comeback narrative, and similar to BU, the Minutemen’s best period is the third. While they’ve scored just eight goals total in 20 first periods so far this season, 30 of their 54 total markers have come in the last frame of regulation.

“Their losses have been very heartbreaking, some of them,” Quinn said. “… And they’re a team that comes back, too. I know they had a couple big comeback wins, and they’re a team that has gotten better.”

UMass ranks 28th in the country in team offense, averaging 2.70 goals per game overall and 2.50 in Hockey East alone. The Minutemen are tied for 48th in team defense, as they allow opponents to score 3.35 tallies a contest and 3.60 in-conference. They’re also outside the top 25 in the nation for power play (29th with a 18.18 percent success rate) and penalty killing (31st with 81.9 percent).

Those numbers may not be particularly staggering, but that doesn’t mean the Terriers’ conference foe won’t give them a game.

“They’re physical, that’s for sure,” Quinn said. “They’re fast, and we’re going to have to be ready for their pressure.”