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UMass Lowell 2025-2026: Youth will be served

W

Will

Member
About a week until the puck drops on the new season, and the boys will be thrown into the fire right away, with Hockey East play starting immediately vs. Merrimack (the first conference game of the season in all of NCAA men's D1 hockey).

A large number of new faces join for the year, with 12 freshmen and a few transfers incoming. It's a welcome sight seeing some drafted players on the roster again, but in this day and age of NIL, the new transfer portal rules, the CHL eligibility changes, and the House vs. NCAA settlement, how will they be able to stack up against the likes of BU, Maine, PC, et al? Even Merrimack managed to land a freshman drafted in the second round.

Hopefully Austin Elliott turns out to be everything we hoped, because for the first time in what seems like forever, we won't have a goalie with significant NCAA experience to lean on (last year was the final year for extra COVID eligibility, so I wouldn't expect many grad transfers going forward). In fact, the entire roster is very young, with only 3 juniors and 6 seniors (counting Ahearn as a senior since he started college 4 years ago). I expect there to be some growing pains, but with the first two games being HE, hopefully the newcomers are quick studies.

From asking around, quite a few people think the coaches' poll put us too low (t-7 with NEU). I'm a little more pessimistic with last years' total collapse down the stretch still in my mind.

I'm still hoping for the best, or at least, a better second half. I have to wonder how hot Norm's seat is after the 11th place finish 2 years ago, and the disappointing finish to last year.
 
Thanks for starting this thread. While we may be "young" in terms of college experience, I have to think we're one of the older teams in HE.
 
UMLFan said:
Thanks for starting this thread. While we may be "young" in terms of college experience, I have to think we're one of the older teams in HE.
Click to expand...
Yep, that's probably true. Meant more so compared to our own past rosters that were heavy on upperclassmen, not to mention grad transfers pushing 25. Haven't done the math (I'm sure someone out there has), but would imagine the blue bloods scooping up the teenagers from the NTDP and such makes their average pretty low.
 
Will said:
About a week until the puck drops on the new season, and the boys will be thrown into the fire right away, with Hockey East play starting immediately vs. Merrimack (the first conference game of the season in all of NCAA men's D1 hockey).

A large number of new faces join for the year, with 12 freshmen and a few transfers incoming. It's a welcome sight seeing some drafted players on the roster again, but in this day and age of NIL, the new transfer portal rules, the CHL eligibility changes, and the House vs. NCAA settlement, how will they be able to stack up against the likes of BU, Maine, PC, et al? Even Merrimack managed to land a freshman drafted in the second round.

Hopefully Austin Elliott turns out to be everything we hoped, because for the first time in what seems like forever, we won't have a goalie with significant NCAA experience to lean on (last year was the final year for extra COVID eligibility, so I wouldn't expect many grad transfers going forward). In fact, the entire roster is very young, with only 3 juniors and 6 seniors (counting Ahearn as a senior since he started college 4 years ago). I expect there to be some growing pains, but with the first two games being HE, hopefully the newcomers are quick studies.

From asking around, quite a few people think the coaches' poll put us too low (t-7 with NEU). I'm a little more pessimistic with last years' total collapse down the stretch still in my mind.

I'm still hoping for the best, or at least, a better second half. I have to wonder how hot Norm's seat is after the 11th place finish 2 years ago, and the disappointing finish to last year.
Click to expand...
Take care of our home games
 
Will said:
Yep, that's probably true. Meant more so compared to our own past rosters that were heavy on upperclassmen, not to mention grad transfers pushing 25. Haven't done the math (I'm sure someone out there has), but would imagine the blue bloods scooping up the teenagers from the NTDP and such makes their average pretty low.
Click to expand...
I don’t personally care about the ages, that’s for the BU/BC folks to complain about when they underachieve, but the CHN app does show the average age of each team. I took a look, and here are the Hockey East ages, youngest to oldest.

1 BU - 19 y 320 d
2 BC - 20 y 287 d
3 Providence - 21 y 67 d
4 Umass - 21 y 121 d
5 Uconn - 21 y 179 d
6 Northeastern - 21 y 281 d
7 Merrimack - 21 y 301 d
8 Vermont - 21 y 349 d
9 Umass Lowell - 22 y 15 d
10 Maine - 22 y 18 d
11 UNH - 22 y 55 d
 
Thanks to Jellsville USA’s post on the UNH thread, an excellent breakdown of Hockey East CHL recruits by Cinnamaroll. He ranks UML’s incoming CHL recruits as tops in HEA in terms of overall potential impact. Nice shoutout in his UML analysis to Barry Scanlon.

substack.com

2025 NCAA CHL Recruiting Class: Hockey East

Welcome to the third part of my series on the CHL recruiting classes for all the NCAA schools.
substack.com substack.com
 
Middle Street said:
I don’t personally care about the ages, that’s for the BU/BC folks to complain about when they underachieve, but the CHN app does show the average age of each team. I took a look, and here are the Hockey East ages, youngest to oldest.

1 BU - 19 y 320 d
2 BC - 20 y 287 d
3 Providence - 21 y 67 d
4 Umass - 21 y 121 d
5 Uconn - 21 y 179 d
6 Northeastern - 21 y 281 d
7 Merrimack - 21 y 301 d
8 Vermont - 21 y 349 d
9 Umass Lowell - 22 y 15 d
10 Maine - 22 y 18 d
11 UNH - 22 y 55 d
Click to expand...
UML, Maine and UNH are all bringing in a good number of CHL players which I would think would skew the average age higher.
 
Will said:
Hopefully Austin Elliott turns out to be everything we hoped, because for the first time in what seems like forever, we won't have a goalie with significant NCAA experience to lean on (last year was the final year for extra COVID eligibility, so I wouldn't expect many grad transfers going forward). In fact, the entire roster is very young, with only 3 juniors and 6 seniors (counting Ahearn as a senior since he started college 4 years ago). I expect there to be some growing pains, but with the first two games being HE, hopefully the newcomers are quick studies.
Click to expand...
i wouldn't sleep on Samuel Richard's experience against men. Elliott had a bonkers season against mostly younger players, while Richard has had 3 straight absolutely spectacular seasons in USports against a similar age range, including: two straight USports championships, first as a rookie and named tournament MVP, won rookie of the year, second one UNB went entirely undefeated all year, that second one Richard gave up 0 goals over the 3 university cup games, won their conference champs all 3 seasons. Elliott i think will be a long term guy, but Richard comes in as a senior and is highly motivated to show his prowess on a stage NHL scouts will have eyes on. Ideally Richard adapts to NCAA quickly (imo most usports transfers will) and holds this fort this year while Elliott (and Goich) adjusts.

honestly, Richard was the thing that pushed UML to the top of my list. maine has a goalie with an even better CHL career than Elliott coming in but hes not expected to be the main guy yet, where it looks like Richard is That Guy. not saying it is guaranteed to work, but im intrigued. will be following UML this season anyways for Misskey but the situation in net is very much of interest.

if it makes you feel any better, the closest comp of a team relying on a CHL guy to be their next thing in net is Bemidji State. WHL goalie of the year Max Hildebrand comes in to a room with 6 total games of NCAA experience (3 per season on junior backup, soph 3rd goalie has 0 games). their success almost entirely rests on his shoulders. at least Richard and Elliott can split this burden.
 
Uml79 said:
Thanks to Jellsville USA’s post on the UNH thread, an excellent breakdown of Hockey East CHL recruits by Cinnamaroll. He ranks UML’s incoming CHL recruits as tops in HEA in terms of overall potential impact. Nice shoutout in his UML analysis to Barry Scanlon.

substack.com

2025 NCAA CHL Recruiting Class: Hockey East

Welcome to the third part of my series on the CHL recruiting classes for all the NCAA schools.
substack.com substack.com
Click to expand...
Thanks for this link.

I can't thank @cinnamoroll enough for his help this offseason with the CHL recruits. Honestly, I don't pay attention to Major Junior, so your posts have been greatly appreciated and helped give us some idea of the players we're getting.
 
Mike McMahon's Bold Prediction ... Diego Buttazoni to win HE Rookie of the Year. If that happens, this could be a better year then I'm expecting currently.
 
Some stats that I found interesting:

1. The last time that Lowell started a season without a goalie that had previously suited up for Lowell was in 2014-15, when Lowell had Jeff Smith, Olli Kalkaja, and Kevin Boyle in net. Boyle, however, had spent the previous season sitting out as a transfer after 2 seasons and 41 games at UMass. Before that, the last time Lowell started a season without a netminder that had played in an NCAA game was in 1971-72 when they started with a tandem of Mike Geragosian and Bob Henry.

2. Lowell has not had a player score 15 or more goals in a season since Andre Lee potted 16 in 2021-22. They haven't had a 20-goal scorer since 2016-17, when C.J. Smith lit the lamp 23 times. 2016-17 was also the last time Lowell had someone top 30 points, when 5 players did so: Joe Gambardella (52), C.J. Smith (51), John Edwardh (39), Dylan Zink (36), Michael Kapla (30).

3. In Hockey East play, the last time Lowell had a player with 10 goals or more was in 2021-22 when Andre Lee had 13. The last time a Lowell player had 15 or more goals in Hockey East play was in 2007-08 when Kory Falite had 15. The last time a Lowell player had 20 or more points in Hockey East play was in 2016-17, when 4 players did so: Joe Gambardella (25), C.J. Smith (25), Dylan Zink (23), and John Edwardh (22).
 
Good stuff, Scott. Thanks.

I genuinely don't know what to expect from this team. The defensive corps is almost all new. There are a couple of forwards that I hope to see a step up from (Delaney, Parks and Buttazzoni come to mind). Goal is a huge question mark.

Two things I'd like to see a lot more of, just for the sake of entertainment ... more goals being scored by the Hawks. The last four seasons, the Hawks have only averaged 2.23 GF per game in league play. That shouldn't be acceptable. They're only at 2.49 in all games, which isn't good either. The 2021/2022 season they averaged almost 3 goals per game (2.91) during the season (all games), but since then it's been a paltry 2.47, 2 and 2.58 the last three years. Those number has to go up. I don't expect a record breaking year or anything, but c'mon, give us something to be excited about.

And the second thing ... this team HAS to protect the Tsongas better. 7-9-2 at home last year, 2-11-3 and the season prior.
 
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