Preview: Hockey East championship vs. Merrimack

How to watch

Date: Friday, March 20 

Time: 7 p.m. ET 

Location: TD Garden, Boston, MA

TV: NESN

Stream: NESN 360/ESPN+

8-seed Merrimack Warriors

Record: 20-15-2 (10-12-2 Hockey East)

Location: North Andover, MA

Head coach: Scott Borek (8th season)

NPI: No. 24

Scouting the Warriors

A resounding win over Boston College has placed the UConn men’s ice hockey team in the Hockey East championship game for the second straight season. If the Huskies win, they’re in the NCAA Tournament field as the league’s automatic qualifier. If they lose, they’re sweating out Selection Sunday hoping chalk holds in other conferences.

The issue? UConn has never won this game before. Mike Cavanaugh and his squad have skated in the Hockey East title game twice — last year and in 2021-22 — but have never been crowned kings of the conference. 

The Merrimack Warriors stand in the way. Their miracle run continued Friday afternoon with a 2-0 win over UMass. Merrimack snapped a six-game losing streak to the Minutemen to break through the semifinal round, becoming the first team in conference history to appear in the title game as an 8-seed. A win over UConn would be the Warriors’ first Hockey East title in program history. 

It has been an uphill climb for the Warriors through the conference tournament. Merrimack took care of ninth-seeded UMass Lowell in the opening round, scoring five goals to dispatch the River Hawks. Then it was a date with top-seeded Providence. Merrimack took a 2-1 lead early in the third period, but needed overtime to take down the conference’s top team. 

Facing Michael Hrabel, recently named the Hockey East Player and Goaltender of the Year, and 2-seeded UMass, Merrimack added another pelt. Kevin O’Connell scored just his fifth goal of the season early in the third period, and Caden Cranston slid in the empty-netter with just under two minutes to play to ice it.

The Warriors have now won six straight games dating back to their third-to-last game of the regular season. Much of their run has been predicated on the outstanding play of goaltender Max Lundgren. The junior carried a 2.67 GAA and .915 save percentage into the semifinal, blanking the Minutemen for his first shutout of the season. In the opening round, Lundgren steered away 23 shots to help down UMass Lowell, followed by an astounding 34 saves against Providence in the quarterfinals. In the upset of UMass, Lundgren posted 24 saves. 

Merrimack has proved to be one of the best teams in the nation on special teams all-season long. The Warriors convert on the power play 27% of the time, tied for the sixth-best clip in Division I with Wisconsin. In a February game against Vermont, the unit cashed in a season-high three times in the win.

Their rankings on the penalty kill dip a bit at No. 22 nationally before the game against UMass, but an 81.8% successful kill percentage is nothing to scoff at. The Warriors are a heavily-penalized group, serving a tick over 12 penalty minutes per game — a rating just outside the top-10 highest in the nation. 

Previous matchups

UConn swept the season series against Merrimack, taking all three games against the Warriors before the calendar had even flipped into the new year. The two programs played a standalone game on Nov. 1, which the Huskies needed all 60 minutes to grab a 5-1 win with the help of two empty-netters. 

Then on Dec. 5 and 6, the Huskies shut the Warriors out in North Andover before claiming a third and final win the next day at Toscano Family Ice Forum. 

By the numbers

0 — UConn has never clinched Hockey East’s automatic qualifying bid by winning the conference tournament. Saturday will be the Huskies’ third appearance in the game and their first time facing Merrimack in it.

.20 — According to CollegeHockeyNews’ NPI Probability Matrix, Merrimack has the third-lowest remaining chance of all remaining Division I teams to advance to the NCAA tournament. The Warriors advance in 20% of simulations, each time as the automatic qualifier. If Merrimack wants to dance, it has to beat UConn. Below the Warriors are Princeton (17%) and Clarkson (14%), both competing in the ECAC semifinals this weekend.

10 — The Huskies outscored the Warriors 13-3 over their three meetings this season, for an aggregate advantage of +10.

11.6 — The Warriors entered Friday’s game vs. UMass with the fifth-best shooting percentage in the nation. Merrimack scored 117 goals on 1,009 shots ahead of the contest, good for an efficient 11.6 shot percentage.