LOWELL, Mass.<\/b> — No. 11 Massachusetts-Lowell completed a weekend sweep of Massachusetts with a 5-0 win on Saturday night at Tsongas Arena.<\/p>\n
With the win, the Riverhawks recapture the Alumni Cup, the trophy given to the winner of UMass\/UML season series.<\/p>\n
The Riverhawks wasted little time in this one, as just 4:31 into the first period C.J. Smith got his team on the board first. Smith intercepted a pass in the neutral zone and broke in on a one-on-one, dangling through the legs of Minuteman defenseman Ivan Chukarov and tucking the puck past the reach of goaltender Nic Renyard for the early 1-0 lead.<\/p>\n
At 10:11, the Riverhawks’ fourth line broke in on a three-on-one following a turnover in the neutral zone. Joe Gambardella fed a pass to Smith, who fired a shot off the left pad of Renyard. Lowell’s Ryan Collins drove the net and buried the rebound on a backhander under Renyard’s right pad to give Lowell (14-4-4) a 2-0 advantage.<\/p>\n
The score remained 2-0 until late in the second period at 17:05 when the Riverhawks again broke into the Minuteman zone on an odd-man rush. Lowell captain A.J. White made a beautiful toe drag move around Minuteman defenseman Jake Horton before feeding a pass to Gage Hough, who fired a shot upstairs, beating Renyard and giving Lowell a commanding 3-0 lead heading into the second intermission.<\/p>\n
The Riverhawks came out of the gate firing in the third period, determined to put the Minutemen (7-12-4) away. <\/p>\n
At 2:46, Ryan Dmowski fed a pass out front from behind the net to Hough, who fired a shot and buried his second goal of the night while going five-hole on Renyard, extending the Riverhawk lead to four. <\/p>\n
Following the game, Hough praised the efforts made by his teammates leading to his two goals on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
“It’s been a process adjusting to this level of play, but the real key to the success I had tonight is my teammates and coaches,” said Hough. “The team had a good weekend and I was lucky enough to benefit with some production. This is one of the closest groups I’ve ever been apart of and it speaks well for our team.”<\/p>\n
Just over two minutes after Hough’s second goal of the night at 4:49, a furious cycle behind the Minuteman net by Evan Campbell and White led to a fifth Riverhawk goal, as White ripped a shot just below the faceoff dot past the glove of Renyard to seal the deal for Lowell.<\/p>\n
Lowell goaltender Kevin Boyle posted his sixth shutout of the season in the win, tying the all-time school record for most shutouts in a season with current Winnipeg Jets goaltender Connor Hellebuyck. <\/p>\n
Riverhawks coach Norm Bazin talked about his goaltender after the game.<\/p>\n
“This young man [Boyle] is quietly having an outstanding career at UMass-Lowell,” said Bazin. “He’s right up there with Connor Hellebuyck and is a huge part of our team’s success.”<\/p>\n
Following the win, a humbled Boyle gave much of the credit to his stellar play on Saturday night to his teammates.<\/p>\n
“Our ‘D’ did a good job of containing their guys in our zone tonight,” said Boyle. “Anytime you can win a trophy in a season, it builds character, and that is exactly what I think this win did for our team tonight.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LOWELL, Mass. — No. 11 Massachusetts-Lowell completed a weekend sweep of Massachusetts with a 5-0 win on Saturday night at Tsongas Arena. With the win, the Riverhawks recapture the Alumni Cup, the trophy given to the winner of UMass\/UML season series. The Riverhawks wasted little time in this one, as just 4:31 into the first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":22374,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21570"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21570"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21572,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21570\/revisions\/21572"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21570"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp-admin.uscho.com\/recaps\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=21570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}