UMass snaps Merrimack's winning streak, series shifts to Mullins
UMass 4, Merrimack 2
Merrimack’s five-game winning streak came to an end Friday night at Lawler Arena with a 4-2 setback against UMass.
Analytically, the Warriors played one of their better games of the season, outshooting the Minutemen 31-20 (21-11 through two periods). Merrimack generated 3.5 expected goals, tied for its third-best output of the year — trailing only the Oct. 25 game against Long Island (4.3) and the Oct. 10 game against UMass Lowell (3.8). It also matched the Warriors’ performance in a game at Brown two weeks ago (3.5).
“Very much liked our effort,” said Merrimack coach Scott Borek. “It’s disappointing — it’s hockey — one team is going to win and one team is going to lose. But if we hit the reset button for the rest of the second half, we’ll win a lot of games.”
The game entered the third period tied 2-2 after a late power-play goal by Trevor Hoskin near the end of the second period, but UMass’ Cam O’Neil found the back of the net at the 2:41 mark of the third to put the Minutemen in front. UMass added an empty-netter in the final seconds to seal it.
“It was unfortunate — we were coming out of our zone well,” Borek said. “They reload hard, and we needed to be faster there. They made a nice play and they finished. We didn’t hang our heads after that — we kept pushing ourselves.”
Caelan Fitzpatrick opened the scoring for the Warriors at the 6:18 mark of the first period.
The series flips to the Mullins Center on Saturday night.
“We need the same energy level,” Borek said. “If we do that, we’ll feel good about our chances. Guys are feeling like we had that game, and I get that, but we need to flush it and get ready to play our best game tomorrow.”