AMHERST, Mass. - No. 16 University of Massachusetts hockey rallied from a one-goal deficit to claim a 3-1 victory over New Hampshire at the Mullins Center on Saturday night. The win moves the Minutemen to 17-12-3 overall, 8-9-3 in Hockey East play, while the Wildcats fall to 11-14-5 overall and 3-13-4 in league action. It also marked head coach Greg Carvel's 166th victory of his UMass tenure, tying him with Don "Toot" Cahoon as the program's all-time wins leader.
"It's been a lot of games this year that I've sat up here and said we deserve better, and I'm not so sure that was the case tonight," said Carvel. "UNH played extremely well. I'll say it again, Michael Hrabal will probably decide every game for us the rest of the way and he did tonight. It felt like we had one shot on net in the third period. Second period, we had a lot of chances. I'm not sure why, but in the third period, UNH took the game over, and we were on our heels, and Michael made a lot of big saves. He was the difference tonight."
UNH opened the scoring 6:38 into the second period when Ryan Conmy cleared the puck up the ice for Nick Ring who beat his man one-on-one to go in alone on Hrabal for the finish.
UMass responded shortly after to tie the score at 1-1. After junior Cole O'Hara made a play to keep the puck in the offensive zone, he tapped it over to Lucas Olvestad. Olvestad's initial shot was stopped by Jared Whale, but the puck trickled through for Owen Murray to tap into the empty net at the 7:18 mark.
O'Hara followed up with the go-ahead goal for the Minutemen just 56 seconds later, winning a battle along the half wall in the defensive zone and creating an odd-man rush with his speed through the neutral zone before electing for the shot instead of the pass, which resulted in his team-leading 18th goal of the year.
Senior Ryan Lautenbach completed the scoring in the closing seconds of the third, tucking in an empty net goal from a defensive zone clear by classmate Lucas Mercuri.
O'Hara's two-point night extends his scoring streak to 10 straight games and puts him in a four-way tie for the national lead in points with 45.
UNH finished the night with a 36-19 shot advantage and went 0-for-3 on the power play, while the Minutemen were 0-for-1.
Hrabal totaled 35 saves in net for UMass and Whale had 16 stops for the Wildcats.
The Minutemen will return to action next Thursday, February 27, when the squad will play host to No. 13 UMass Lowell at 7 p.m.
