Men’s Hockey Breaks Ice in Rassey-Era, Beats No. 20 UMass 2-1

An early-week puck drop and Harvard’s first game in two years against the No. 20 University of Massachusetts Amherst Minutemen ushered in a new era of men’s ice hockey, with heightened expectations, a refreshed roster sheet, and, most notably, head coach Rob Rassey’s first regular-season appearance.

The Crimson (1-0) brought its best in the home opener, shooting past the Minutemen (3-4-1, 1-0 HE) en route to a 2-1 victory.

Rassey said that he and his coaching staff have been focused on the “building blocks” of fostering a winning team and winning mentality.

“It’s next shift, next battle. We’re not focusing on kind of the end results,” the head coach said.

“So, for us, we’re hoping that stacking those habits and then kind of narrowing it down and keeping those wins a little bit smaller, per every race, every battle on the ice, per every shift that you play,” Rassey said. “Just focus on winning those, and I think by doing that and having that mentality is going to allow us to have success at the end of the year as a whole.”

Star sophomore forward Heikki Ruohonen — the Philadelphia Flyers’ fourth-round draft selection from Finland — opened the scoring in the first five minutes, and Harvard never looked back. The play was quick: A fumbled Amherst puck in the offensive zone allowed an immediate flip-up shot over the Minutemen’s freshman netminder Ethan Eskit’s glove.

Ruohonen’s goal was one of several examples of the Crimson’s opportunistic play that helped secure the win. Captain and defenseman Matthew Morden leveraged another chance on his way out of the penalty box, completing a quick breakout and shooting to the same spot.

Though less successful on its three power plays, Harvard continued to pepper the net with shots, fueling its offense and helping it outshoot the Minutemen in all three periods.

Rassey’s return to Cambridge was announced in June when he was named the program’s 12th head coach following Ted Donato’s ’91 departure a month prior. Some immediate questions swirled following the announcement, but the most important was how Rassey, formerly Harvard’s assistant coach before taking the same position at Michigan, would turn around one of the country’s strongest rosters on paper and string together a strong bid for the NCAA Championship.

In its season opener, the Crimson was the first team to settle in and soared to an 11-5 shot differential in the opening period.

Despite the host’s early goal, Rassey said the first few minutes were still an “adjustment period” for the team making its regular-season debut.

Before facing Harvard, UMass had already played seven games and gained valuable experience.

“That’s a good hockey team over there. It was fast, and it took us a little bit for our team to get our legs under us,” Rassey said.

Ruohonen centered Harvard’s top line alongside junior left wing Mick Thompson and captain Michael Callow. That marked a change from Donato’s first all-freshman line last season, composed of Ruohonen and now fellow sophomores Richard Gallant and Aidan Lane.

Rassey said the team’s lineup “came together” over the course of the September practices.

“We kind of came in with an open mind as a staff and wanted to just try and see who established chemistry early,” Rassey explained.

Harvard also relied on its defensive depth as it dealt with the Minutemen’s aggressive forecheck in the second period.

Seven minutes in, UMass senior left wing Jack Musa put the puck past the Crimson’s junior goaltender Ben Charette’s glove side, scoring the visitor’s only goal. The Minutemen tried to follow it up moments later, but the net was knocked off the posts.

Harvard suddenly was playing almost entirely in its defensive end, trapped in its own zone. Exhausted by UMass’s offensive cycle, the Crimson committed two penalties in the second half of the period. The first penalty was for holding against junior defenseman Lucas St. Louis, and the second was on Morden for hooking. The consecutive calls forced Harvard to kill back-to-back penalties without having a respite.

But Morden — a Utah Mammoth draft pick — stunned the crowd when he rushed out of the box and corralled a stretch pass, taking advantage of a bad change by UMass to score the Crimson’s second goal of the day. The goal gave the Crimson a 2-1 lead with nearly two minutes left in the second period. At the buzzer, Harvard had posted 24 shots to the Minutemen’s 14.

In the third period, UMass felt a growing pressure to score and took its second penalty of the game just over a minute into the final frame.

The frantic Minutemen continued to lay into the Crimson and pulled the goaltender for the extra skater, but the team lacked the composure of Harvard’s collected defense.

After the game, UMass head coach Greg Carvel pointed to several reasons for his team’s loss — despite the Minutemen’s eight minutes of momentum in the second period — saying Harvard “really bore us down.”

Examining Morden’s goal, Carvel pointed to a mistake by one of the team’s new freshmen choosing to skate behind the net instead of staying on the boards to defend the breakout.

“That was just a real player, an example of how we have young guys that don’t know how to play the game the right way,” he said.

“We can’t put 60 minutes together right now,” Carvel added. “Maybe put half a game together. Lots of things that don’t look like UMass Amherst.”

Rassey, meanwhile, suggested his players also had room for improvement, but ultimately said that the team was off to a strong start for the season.

“At the end of the day, we had two really big blocked shots on the penalty kill, which is great to see, and that’s just about mentality and just sacrifice for the team,” he said. “So, good start.”

The Crimson has the chance to prove it can do the same thing on away ice on Saturday when it will play at UMass’s Mullins Community Ice Center. Puck drop is set for 7 p.m. and can be streamed on ESPN+.

—Staff writer Nate M. Bolan can be reached at [email protected].

—Staff writer Alexa M. Schmitt can be reached at [email protected] or Signal at alexaschmitt.15. Follow her on X ​​@alexa_m15_s.