AMHERST — UMass’ roster was already getting thin when the Minutemen headed to Lowell last weekend.
Before the game, coach Greg Carvel announced that Philip Lagunov underwent season-ending surgery on his hip and the Minutemen were without Mitchell Chaffee as he deals with an upper-body injury. Then toward the end of the first period Friday, Cal Kiefiuk absorbed a big hit in front of the goal that left him with a broken jaw. The freshman is now out for the season.
Chaffee was a full participant at practice Tuesday, and his return would give Carvel just one healthy forward to scratch. Carvel said Tuesday it was too early to tell if Chaffee would return this weekend when No. 8 UMass (19-10-2, 12-7-2 Hockey East) faces Connecticut (14-13-4, 11-8-2) in a home-and-home series beginning Friday at 7 p.m. in Hartford. If Chaffee isn’t healthy enough to play, it will continue to put the onus on some of the Minutemen’s role players to step up in the stretch run.
“We don’t have many extra bodies, we might be five guys shorter than when we started the season,” Carvel said. “We’ve had – I don’t know if it’s luxury – but we’ve relied on (John) Leonard and Chaffee, then you take Chaffee out of the lineup and you need other guys to step up. Often that’s what happens. Teams lose their best players then they go on these win streaks because everybody else is like ‘I’ve got to step up and do my job or do better and bring more.’ We challenged a lot of guys this past weekend and when you have high-character kids, they usually step up and that’s what we’ll continue to need down the stretch.”
In last weekend’s split with UMass-Lowell, Carvel had freshman Jeremy Davidson skating in Chaffee’s place alongside Jack Suter and Oliver Chau. It was really the first significant action of the season for Davidson, who had mostly played on the fourth line in his 18 previous appearances for the Minutemen.
Carvel said he felt like Saturday’s 5-3 win over UMass-Lowell was Davidson’s best game of the season, and the freshman from Kalamazoo, Michigan, said the experience of playing with Chau and Suter gave him a boost on the ice.
“It definitely gave me some more confidence,” Davidson said. “They like to play fast, they like to play hard, the same way I like to play. I felt like playing with them gave me a step in my game.”
At this point of the season, UMass is having to make several unorthodox changes to the lineup due to injury concerns. Freshman defenseman Gianfranco Cassaro is playing as a winger in an attempt to get his competitiveness onto the ice more often than he would as a seventh defenseman. Carvel said Cassaro hasn’t been good enough on the wing, but added he understands it’s difficult for the lifelong defenseman to be playing out of position while trying to learn the responsibilities of that position.
Carvel said it will take every player stepping up to help UMass close the season strong, also asking for more contributions from some of the veterans who haven’t made as big of an impact so far this season. Davidson said he knows that’s what’s being asked of him and he’s trying to make changes in every part of his game to help prepare him to contribute when he’s needed during the stretch run.
“It’s not really pressure for me,” Davidson said. “It’s just being better prepared, practicing harder, working on my game as much as I can and preparing myself for when those times do come up when I need to step up my game.”
UMass has secured its spot in the Hockey East tournament, but it is still battling for home-ice advantage. A sweep of fourth-place Connecticut, which sits only two points back of the second-place Minutemen, will go a long way to helping secure at least two more games at the Mullins Center in two weeks for the conference quarterfinals.
The pathway to those points has been laid out over the last three weeks during which UMass has won three out of four games against ranked foes. After UMass defeated UMass-Lowell last Saturday, junior center Jake Gaudet said the Minutemen have tried to show the younger players how to win at this level, and is hopeful the freshmen are picking up on what they need to do each shift to help the team be successful in the home stretch.
“When we play well against Lowell (last Saturday) or Providence (earlier this month), you can recognize the patterns where everybody is finishing their check and it’s all in the details,” Gaudet said. “Through that kind of success, the freshmen see and we’ve made it important that they realize that the keys to success are what made us successful in those wins.”
Josh Walfish can be reached at jwalfish@gazettenet.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshWalfishDHG. Get UMass coverage delivered in your Facebook news feed at www.facebook.com/GazetteUMassCoverage.