DURHAM — There was a definite sense of relief Saturday night at the Whittemore Center.
Stuck on nine wins for almost two months, the University of New Hampshire men’s hockey team finally ended the longest drought in coach Dick Umile’s 28-year tenure as the face of the program with a 3-1 victory over Massachusetts.
With a tie Friday night and a win 24 hours later, the Wildcats picked up three of a possible four Hockey East points in their most productive league weekend since a two-game sweep of UMass-Lowell to open the season.
The triumph over UMass snapped a 12-game winless streak (0-8-4), the longest since they lost 15 in a row during the 1984-85 season.
“Based off the last stretch that we had we're really happy with the results this weekend,” said junior forward Marcus Vela, who scored an insurance goal Saturday night. “We played a good Northeastern team. Despite the shots we played a good defensive game. We were happy to come away with a point. We weren’t satisfied with the result, but at least we came away with a point instead of a loss. Coming into (Saturday) we just had to build off that.”
The Wildcats did it despite being outshot 68-36 in the two games and scoring just one 5-on-5 goal. The other three came on the power play. They relied heavily on goalie Danny Tirone, who stopped 66 of those 68 shots, including 40 of 41 in Friday night’s 1-1 draw with No. 9/11 Northeastern.
The only shot to beat him in that game was a nice individual effort by NU’s Nolan Stevens that made ESPN’s top 10 plays of the day at No. 6.
“The team responded to Danny’s game (Friday) night especially,” Vela said. “(We’ve) just got to play for him as he was playing for us (Friday) night. It was a defensive battle on our part and we came out with the energy we played with (Friday) night, and obviously we saw it again tonight.”
Freshman defenseman Max Gildon scored the Wildcats’ only goal Friday night and had two assists Saturday, including a sharp diagonal pass to classmate Kohei Sato, who was left uncovered at the far side of the cage and converted the feed into his first college goal.
It gave UNH a 2-0 lead and stood up as the game-winner. Frankie Cefalu also assisted on the play.
“Last time I scored was last year at this time when I was playing juniors,” said Sato, a native of Japan who came to North America eight years ago. “My previous team didn’t make the playoffs so my season ended pretty early. That was the last time I scored. I forgot how great it felt.
“At first I didn’t even realize it went in,” he added. “I thought it went over the net and into the netting. Then guys just came piling in and I realized it went in.”
Liam Blackburn and Vela also scored. With the Wildcats up 2-1, Vela added an insurance goal on the power play midway through the third period, sweeping a backhander home after collecting the rebound of a shot by Gildon.
“We had momentum coming in from (Friday) night’s game against Northeastern,” Sato said. “We definitely built our confidence level up and we made a great transition coming into tonight against UMass Amherst.”
UNH had the man advantage that resulted in Vela’s goal after UMass’s Jake Gaudet was assessed a five-minute major and a game misconduct for checking Jason Salvaggio into the boards from behind.
“We played a good third period tonight,” Umile said. “With the 2-1 lead we came out and played well in the start the third period and I thought that was important. The five-minute major was huge because it takes five minutes off the clock and we score. It would have been nice if we could have gotten another one, but that was a huge goal.”
The Wildcats (10-13-5, 5-9-4 HE) withstood an apparent goal by the Minutemen that would have made it 3-2 — but was called back for goaltender interference — and a late penalty to hold on.
“We needed that for our confidence and a lot of hard work,” Umile said. “Hopefully we can go forward with that.”
With six games left in the regular season, they look to build on the positive momentum next weekend when they host Vermont for a two-game series at the Whitt. The clubs are tied for eighth in the latest league standings, the last place for home ice in the first round of the playoffs.
“Obviously for us we’re looking at home ice right now,” Vela said. “That’s a goal for us. This weekend was a start to that. It headed us in the right direction so we’ve got to go into next weekend and prepare hard in practice this week and come out ready to go and make that happen for us.”