AMHERST — Greg Carvel looks to his daughters, Kathryn and Ava, to judge how excited fans are about his hockey teams.
When Carvel coached for five seasons at St. Lawrence, most trips to the supermarket involved interacting with fans and anonymity wasn’t an option. When he arrived in Amherst three years ago to take over at UMass, Carvel and his family weren’t hounded on their trips out of their house. But after a 12-win improvement from his inaugural season, Carvel is a bit more popular now when he steps out to go shopping.
“When I coached at St. Lawrence, you went to the grocery store and you knew everybody,” said Carvel, whose team opens Friday against Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at the Mullins Center. “My first year here, as my kids would say, we can go to the grocery store and nobody bugs us. Now I go to the grocery store and people start to say hello and say they’re excited about the hockey team.”
The added excitement about this year’s UMass squad ties in with the slogan that has become synonymous with the hockey program – NewMass. Carvel said he didn’t like the negative connotation that was associated with the phrase “ZooMass,” and wanted to present a more positive brand for the program.
What started as a saying within the locker room transformed into a marketing push on season tickets, a social media hashtag and most importantly, the description for the style of play Carvel is ingraining in his players.
“NewMass is kind of our identity,” junior captain Niko Hildenbrand said. “We say it’s fast, hard, prepared. It’s every single shift going out there and being that team that everyone looks at their schedule and says ‘Wow, we’ve got to play UMass tonight, it’s going to be another tough game.’ To us, that’s what NewMass is, it’s being able to go out every night and compete and really make that other team work for it.”
The new culture within the program has ignited the passion in the fan base and ensured UMass is no longer a sleeper in Hockey East. Carvel said the team has made a concerted attempt over the last three years to re-energize and re-engage with the community, students and alumni, efforts that paid off with the raucous environment for the first-round playoff series with Vermont last year.
“We do a lot of work to show the community that we care and we’re trying to get them engaged and we feel it in a lot of ways,” Carvel said. “I love it, that’s what college hockey is about. It’s not just about getting the students engaged – which we feel like we’re doing that – but it’s also getting the community and the alumni. It’s a three-pronged effort to get all those fully engaged and we’re making good progress on each front.”
Of course with great excitement comes great expectations from the fans and those outside the program. UMass was picked to finish sixth in the Hockey East preseason coaches’ poll, a steady improvement from the past few years. It’s the type of noise teams shut out and downplay during the season, but it also injects confidence in the team.
Hildenbrand said the players enjoy the fans’ energy and believes it’ll add something to the Minutemen’s performances at home this season.
“It’s awesome because it shows they see how hard we’re working and see that they recognize the time we’re putting in,” Hildenbrand said. “This is important to us and having that recognition adds a little fuel to the fire. We try to block out as much as we can, but we know the support from the community is massive for us and we really appreciate it.”
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.
