AMHERST — Ask anyone about the first half of Matt Murray’s season, and the same word keeps coming up in the conversation – consistency.
The sophomore goalie is 11-0-0 with a 1.90 goals against average and a .931 save percentage, marks that place him second in Hockey East in both categories. But more importantly, he has sustained that success over the entire first three months of the season for the second-ranked Minutemen (14-2-0, 7-0-0).
“Everything has been smooth with his game,” sophomore goalie Brad Arvanitis said. “He worked hard all offseason and it’s been showing off.”
Murray has been at his best in all four of UMass’ biggest wins. He backstopped the Minutemen’s 6-3 upset over then-No. 1 Ohio State on Oct. 19 and stonewalled then-No. 8 Quinnipiac in UMass’ 3-1 victory on Dec. 8. But his best two games came in a critical weekend sweep of Providence in early November.
In both games, UMass jumped out to an early lead before the Friars besieged Murray with shots and pressure. Although Providence rallied to tie both games, Murray stood on his head and came up with several saves in critical situations to allow the Minutemen to eventually score the winning goal late. His pair of 29-save performances against the Friars earned him Hockey East Player of the Week honors en route to being named the conference’s top goalie in November.
“He’s been awesome,” sophomore defenseman Mario Ferraro said. “He’s been really consistent, he’s stolen a couple of games, which is awesome. You need your goaltender to be a high and he definitely is. As long as he keeps saving the puck, we’re going to have a lot of success.”
Murray deflected the credit to his teammates for being dominant enough in possession to relieve the pressure most nights.
“It’s something I’m pretty happy about, I think my level of play has been acceptable,” Murray said after a 5-2 win over Yale on Dec. 11 to close out the first half of the season. “I’ve had tremendous help from the guys in front of me, it’s made my job very easy. Personally, I feel like I’ve been seeing pucks well, moving and finding things through traffic.”
The goalie situation is something coach Greg Carvel will need to juggle over the final months of the season. Murray is almost assuredly going to start Friday when the Minutemen resume the season at home against UMass Lowell (8-8-1, 4-4-1) at 7 p.m., but how Carvel divides playing time after that will be interesting to watch.
The coach joked that he had a hard enough time finding games for backup Filip Lindberg to play, let alone some minutes for Arvanitis. But with Lindberg still on national team duty with Team Finland this weekend, Carvel said there have been internal discussions about Arvanitis playing Saturday against American International in Springfield.
Murray has benefited from battling with his two teammates in practice and that has given him an edge on game day. Arvanitis said he knows what type of challenge it will be for Lindberg and him to match the level Murray has performed at this season.
“Ultimately whoever’s playing the best is going to play,” Arvanitis said. “Matt’s shown that this season, but the competition in practice led to it. As three goalies, it’s tough, but you learn from each other.”
SEVENTH HEAVEN — When the idea was first instituted, Carvel said he wasn’t a big fan of the 19th skater. Three months into the season, the coach is singing a very different tune.
“I didn’t like at the beginning of the year when they added this extra player,” Carvel said, “but now I love it because we have seven excellent defensemen and we never get tired on the back end. If someone’s having an off night, somebody else steps in and we have six guys going pretty well.”
In addition to Murray’s play, the Minutemen have taken large strides on the defensive end with seven capable defensemen rotating through. The top pairs of defensemen — Cale Makar joining Marc Del Gaizo and Ferraro matched with Ty Farmer — are the offensive threats, while the other three have provided a gritty physicality. It has been consistency from the third pairing and the extra skater that has helped keyed UMass’ strong start.
Injuries forced Carvel to shuffle those final three spots at times, but no matter who has been sent out there, they have gotten the job done. Carvel knew what he was getting out of senior Ivan Chukarov and junior Jake McLaughlin, but he said freshman Colin Felix has surprised with how quickly he has acclimated to the college game. The trio have taken over the Minutemen’s penalty kill and anchored the sixth-ranked unit in the country.
“It’s an embarrassment of riches back there,” Carvel said. “My first year here, Ivan was our top defenseman and now he’s five, six, seven, but he’s twice as good now as he was two years ago. … Our back end, we have the top four who are moreso offensive guys and then Felix, Chukarov and McLaughlin, we’ve basically handed the PK over to them and they’ve done an unbelievable job.”