Inside College Hockey | The Lowdown on Lowell

November 20, 2008

By Jeff Howe

UMass Lowell's Kory Falite is tied for second in Hockey East with six goals.

UMass Lowell’s fortune has been staked to 13 players, a junior class whose development over the course of their tenure along the banks of the Merrimack River is more important to their program than any class in the country.

They faced growing pains as freshmen, as the River Hawks missed the Hockey East playoffs in 2006-07 for the first time in seven years. Last year, they learned how to pick up a team, making noise during a late postseason push to finish seventh in the league before pushing second-seed Boston University to three games before bowing out in the first round. And this season, the Chosen 13 are applying two years of knowledge to specific situations on the ice. Most notably, UMass Lowell isn’t waiting to find a way to lose anymore; rather, it’s chasing a victory.

Forward Kory Falite is one of those juniors leading the resurgence of a program that hasn’t hosted a postseason series or reached the Hockey East semifinals since 2002. After leading the River Hawks with 18 goals and 32 points last season, Falite has a team-high six goals and nine points through nine games this year. While UMass Lowell is 5-4-0, Falite believes the team could be better and points to a pair of losses — 2-1 at Colgate on Oct. 11, and 2-1 at Michigan State on Oct. 17 — he believes his team should have won. And he admitted, despite trailing late in those games, no one on the team felt they were going to lose either contest.

“I think you can see a difference from last year to this year,” Falite said. “I’ve seen it actually develop the whole time. Freshman year, we had 15 freshmen playing and we lost a lot of close games. You can see us now learning how to win games, and it just helps having so many older guys.

“Freshman year, we couldn’t play with the lead, it seemed like. Every time we got the lead, we’d blow it in the third. … That’s the biggest thing, learning how to play with the lead and learning how to win games.”

But they’re admittedly still learning. During a game against Boston University on Nov. 7 at Tsongas Arena, UMass Lowell had a 3-1 lead in the second period and was ahead 4-3 with less than three minutes to play in the third period before the Terriers ripped off three goals in the final 2:14 to steal a victory away from the River Hawks. That defeat seemed to take a toll on the team the next night when Vermont went to Lowell and won, 3-1, to give UML its only two-loss weekend of the young season.

“I think in a way — it sounds weird — it was good for us to bring us back down when we blew that lead to BU,” Falite said. “I think [we're] learning the steps to crush a team when they’re down, pin a team in their zone when you’ve got the lead, and not step back defensively.”

With that said, Falite was impressed with the way the River Hawks rebounded last weekend, blowing the doors off New Hampshire, 8-3, on Friday at home before suffocating UMass, 2-0, the next night at the Mullins Center. The two victories over ranked conference opponents gave the River Hawks a 3-2-0 mark in Hockey East play, putting them right in the middle of the standings with the league schedule starting up full-tilt every weekend.

If they can keep this thing going with home games against Providence and Northeastern this weekend before traveling 20 minutes down the street to Merrimack on Tuesday, the River Hawks will have taken advantage of a schedule that’s been heavily loaded with Hockey East home games. With the team’s sights set high, a strong start would put UMass Lowell in a strong position to get after a lofty goal once the second half gets underway.

“I think the common goal around this locker room is Banknorth, go to the Garden no matter what it takes,” Falite said. “That’s been our goal since freshman year. We’ve got to go to the Garden. That’s on our minds all the time. I think this team challenges each other both on and off the ice well enough that it’s a definite possibility for us. That’s a great thing, and that’s definitely a common theme around the team. Twenty wins, we’ve mentioned a couple times, but mainly just get to the Garden and the tournament.”