For many UMass students, the most entertaining sport to watch on campus is hockey. The 2023-2024 UMass season ended after a disappointing loss to Denver in the first round of the NCAA playoffs. Denver won 2-1 in an intense double overtime. At the end of this season, it was announced that juniors Scott Morrow and Ryan Ufko would leave to pursue professional hockey. With such immense losses, many fans are left wondering what the future holds for our program. In order to find out, I sat down with Coach Greg Carvel to get a better picture of what the next few years will look like for the program. This is what he had to say.
With the loss of both captains after this season, what qualities do you look for when choosing new captains?
“I want the highest character kids who are very consistent and live up to our standards. That means they’re leading the way for the other players, showing them how they should handle themselves academically and in the weight room, and how we play a certain style on the ice. A lot of captains are young men with a lot of integrity but also a lot of courage to be able to lead their peers, which isn’t an easy thing to do.”
How are you looking for current team members to step up next season?
“We will spend time talking about leadership and evolving players as they go from younger players on the team to veteran players. It’s important that we help them develop as hockey players but also as leaders, and that’s what we’ll do a lot this spring. As for coaching, they’ll be working in the weight room a lot. But we’ll also be in the locker room a lot talking about all the different values that are important for good teams.”
How important is recruiting for the future of UMass? Is the program looking more into developing prospects or trying to build on what you already have?
“You’re always recruiting, you’re always developing. That’s the one somewhat frustrating part of the job, is that once you develop a kid he’s usually moving on and it’s time to start over again. Onboarding freshman every year takes a lot of work, a lot of time. If you want a certain culture and a certain type of environment for your players, it takes a lot of the staff’s time to create that. You know it used to be you had a player for four years and then good players are gone in three years. Now with the transfer portal, you may lose a lot of players year to year.”
What is your opinion on the transfer portal? Do you think it is beneficial to players or harmful?
“I believe it’s just not structured the right way. I think even before five years ago I would have argued that there needs to be some avenue for players to move on to another team and not have to sit out a year. To me, it should be a situation where both the player and the team decide that he’s free to leave. But I feel for programs that do a really good job finding good players, helping them get better, and then those players decide to go on to greener pastures. But that is the world that the NCAA has created now.”
 What does a successful next season look like to you?
“Well to me it’s the two benchmarks we achieved this year: to get to Boston Garden and be one of the final four teams in our league, because if you do that you most likely will qualify for the NCAA tournament. Those are the two marks of a really good season. If you can play in your league’s final four and you can play in the NCAA tournament, then you’ve had a hell of a hockey season.”
So, what does the future hold for UMass hockey? Only time will tell. Until then, keep showing up for hockey and all our UMass sports teams. Go Minutemen!
*This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
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