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UMass Lowell 2024-2025 Season: Expectations are.....Expectations

Middle Street said:
Fun night at the Tsongas and a pretty good sized crowd for an exhibition too. Glad to see the team look dominant. I don’t recall the last time they beat one of these Canadian teams by such a wide margin. This same team lost to Umass 4-3 last night.

Glad Norm scheduled this, the games next weekend are pretty important. Lowell is up to 8 in the PWR, that’s pretty high for this time of year. Who would have imagined?

It was nice to see Roc Truman set up his brother for a goal.
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To answer a few of your questions:

The 9 goals scored by Lowell tonight is the 2nd most that they have ever scored in an exhibition game. The most is 10, in a 10-0 win over Boston College at Tully Forum on November 6, 1982 (when Lowell was still Division 2).

The 9 goals tonight is tied for the most that Lowell has scored under Norm Bazin. They also pumped home 9 in a 9-5 win over Maine at Tsongas on January 4, 2021. The last time they scored more than 9 was when they put home a Division 1-era record 13 in a 13-1 win over Connecticut in the 1[SUP]st[/SUP] round of the City of Lights Tournament at Tsongas on November 26, 1999.

The 7-goal margin of victory was the largest since a 7-0 win over University of Prince Edward Island in an exhibition at Tsongas on October 2, 2016. The last time it happened in the regular season was an 8-1 win over Arizona State at Tsongas on February 15, 2016. The last time they had a larger margin of victory was an 8-0 win over Bentley at Tsongas on November 27, 2004.

Lowell was 8th in the Pairwise rankings at the break (now 10th after tonight). This is tied for their 2nd highest Pairwise ranking coming out of the break under Norm:

2013-14 8th at the break, finished 7th.
2016-17 6th at the break, finished 5th.

Under Norm Bazin, Lowell has been in the Top 16 of the Pairwise at the break 8 times previously, and made the NCAA tournament 5* of those 8 times. The misses:

2014-15 12th at the break, finished 18th
2019-20 12th at the break, finished 11th, but tournament cancelled due to COVID
2022-23 14th at the break, finished 26th

On the flip side, there was one season under Norm Bazin that Lowell was not in the Top 16 of the pairwise at the break but did make the NCAA Tournament - In 2012-13, Lowell was 21st coming out of the break and finished 3rd, earning a #1 seed, eventually reaching the Frozen Four.
 
UMLFan said:
Also a shocker up in Orono tonight with Bentley beating Maine 4-2. They were outshot 45-19, but their PK probably was the biggest reason for the win, killing 5 of 6 Maine power plays. I know Bentley is having a good season so far (10-5-2 coming into today's matchup), but I wouldn't have expected the Hockey East leader to lose at home to them. Maine now hosts Denver twice next weekend before heading to Lowell in 2 weekends.
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Not really a shocker, as the game was in Portland, which the Mainiacs blame for their loss tonight. Bentley is now 3-2-0 all time against the Black Bears, whereas the Falcons are only 2-7-0 against your Ospreys. Bentley had one-goal losses to UNH (OT), UMass, and UML (exhibition), and a two-goal loss to NU earlier this season. This season is probably Bentley’s best chance for making the NCAA’s as the Atlantic Hockey auto-seed in a long time (they have never made it), as they are only 3 points behind leader Sacred Heart but have four games in hand.
 
UMLFan said:
There were a few reasons for this, but if people didn't see it, last year's NCAA Champions Denver lost their exhibition game to UNLV last night in a shootout. UNLV is in the ACHA.
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Denver has been in a bit of slump lately. After starting the season 12-0 they have lost 4 of 6 games heading into the break. They head to Orono for two next weekend.
 
Middle Street said:
Fun night at the Tsongas and a pretty good sized crowd for an exhibition too. Glad to see the team look dominant. I don’t recall the last time they beat one of these Canadian teams by such a wide margin. This same team lost to Umass 4-3 last night.

Glad Norm scheduled this, the games next weekend are pretty important. Lowell is up to 8 in the PWR, that’s pretty high for this time of year. Who would have imagined?

It was nice to see Roc Truman set up his brother for a goal.
Click to expand...

It was also nice to see Moriello, Collins and MacDonald get some ice time. The way the team has been playing it's been tough getting into the lineup. Considering the score, it was nice to see the game didn't get out of hand.

As you mentioned, big games next weekend. Just take care of business. Have a great time to the folks that are heading to Palm Springs.
 
Lowell is 3-0-0 all-time in the state of California, defeating US International University 3 times in the mid-80s.

2/3/1984 5-2 win
2/4/1984 4-2 win
1/14/1986 5-2 win
 
Feels like this could be a trap game. On the one hand yes Tech plays in a weaker league and their OOC competition hasn't been great but there's some good players at the top of their roster (Sardarian, Koskipirtti, Pietila) and Mullahy has been good in net. They took Western to overtime last week in the GLI as well. If Lowell comes out with energy and playing their game they'll be fine but this is definitely no shoo-in game to be taken lightly.
 
Not sure I'd consider this a trap game as on paper these teams look pretty even, however Michigan Tech's PK is worse than Lowell's, so if Lowell can draw penalties in this game, special teams might be the difference.
 
Middle Street said:
Not sure I'd consider this a trap game as on paper these teams look pretty even, however Michigan Tech's PK is worse than Lowell's, so if Lowell can draw penalties in this game, special teams might be the difference.
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1-1 after 2 periods. So far MTU is winning the special team's battle. They scored 2 minutes into the game on the PP. Lowell's PP has let them down so far. They pretty much had a 6-minute PP in the second period and came up empty. At times it looks like they are giving up good shots trying to make the perfect play. Just shoot the puck. Huge 3rd period coming up.
 
Power play goal by Lee Parks with 1:41 left (4th power play of the game) sends Lowell to the Championship game tomorrow night with a 3-2 win. Lowell also took the last 6 shots of the game.
 
Glad they scored on that 4th one, I’d have felt like a jinx. I loved the effort they put in to keep MTU from being able to pull their goalie after the goal as well.
 
It'd be nice to see Parks get hot in the second half and show some of that scoring touch he had in the USHL. Time to bring a trophy back east tomorrow.
 
Omaha has some good wins this year, including against Minnesota to win the Ice Breaker tournament. Hopefully the Riverhawks don't overlook them.
 
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