Kevin Boyle Interview

Free agency has been busy so far for several familiar faces. Five former River Hawks have signed National Hockey League (NHL) contracts in the past month, with others inking deals with AHL or ECHL teams.
 
There are six former River Hawks currently playing in the NHL, with several others including goaltender Kevin Boyle poised to join the ranks. Just July 12 alone, recently-graduated defensemen Tyler Mueller and Chris Forney signed their own deals with the Bridgeport Sound Tigers and San Diego Gulls, respectively.
 
Also among the recent deals were goaltender Connor Hellebuyck's blockbuster extension with the Winnipeg Jets, which nets him $37 million over the next six years and makes him the sixth highest-paid goaltender in the NHL.
 
This came after Hellebuyck finished the 2017-2018 season as the first goaltender with a playoffs win in franchise history and a finalist for the Vezina Trophy.
 
Hellebuyck is one of UMass Lowell's most beloved former athletes for his incredible two seasons in front of River Hawks fans. Hellebuyck led UMass Lowell to its first two Hockey East Championship titles (2013, 2014) and its first Frozen Four appearance in 2013.
 
As satisfying as it is for Hellebuyck to get a big (and deserved) payday, it is even better for the Jets to lock up the goaltender who presents the biggest chance to win them the ultimate prize: the hallowed Stanley Cup.
 
One of Hellebuyck's former teammates at UMass Lowell, defenseman Christian Folin, signed a one-year contract with Philadelphia Flyers. Folin has played parts of five NHL seasons, which started after he won his second consecutive Hockey East Championship title with UMass Lowell in 2014. Joining the Minnesota Wild out of free agency, he tallied one assist in his NHL debut. Folin stayed in the Wild system until 2017 playing for both Minnesota (118 games) and Iowa (41 games). He was then traded to the Los Angeles Kings, where he posted 3-10-13 in 65 games.
 
Folin joins an exciting Flyers team which will be trying to assert themselves in the strong Metropolitan conference. With the recent addition of left winger James van Riemsdyk, who arrives in Philadelphia out of free agency, River Hawk faithful can expect to see Folin guarding the blue line of a team which may soon come to dominate the Eastern Conference.
 
Scott Wilson, another two-time champion who also won the Stanley Cup in 2017, inked a two-year extension deal with the Buffalo Sabres. After being dealt to Buffalo from Detroit in December 2017, the center scored 14 points in 49 games.
 
Joining Wilson is goaltender Carter Hutton, who has enjoyed a career as a dependable backup goaltender with the Nashville Predators and St. Louis Blues. Hutton signed a 3-year, $8.25 million deal and will be in tandem with Linus Ullmark.
 
Kevin Boyle is another one of UMass Lowell's sleeper wunderkind goalies, and he too has exciting news of his own. Boyle, who backstopped the River Hawks within one game of the Frozen Four in 2015-2016, is looking to let his game speak to his own case as a potential NHL-caliber goaltender. He signed a two-year, two-way extension with the Anaheim Ducks on June 18.
 
For Boyle, it is just the next part of a whirlwind experience in professional hockey.
 
"If you would have told me, even back when I was here that that would have been my third NHL contract signed, I would have thought you were crazy," said Boyle.
 
Boyle signed with Anaheim out of free agency after a career senior season in which he posted a .934 save percentage in 39 games. He was a near-constant presence in net, starting in all but one game, and came to be one of the most important players on that year's team for his reliability. Boyle allowed an average of 1.83 goals a game, broke the single-season shutout record and was a finalist for the Mike Richter Award. He also picked up hardware in Belfast, Ireland as the River Hawks won the first annual Friendship Four tournament, and came away from Hockey East play as Co-Player of the Year and Tournament MVP.
 
He says that he is looking forward to reporting to Ducks training camp, but stays realistic about his chances of cracking the NHL lineup. "The Ducks have two pretty well-established goalies up there so I really just want to play as best I can," he says. "If there's an injury, if I get an opportunity, [I'll] make the most of it. That's really all I can do at this point."
 
But there is a chance. Remember that.
 
It is hard to believe that Boyle was once a struggling backup goaltender for UMass Amherst, going 16-17-6 in two seasons for the flagship campus and posting a .896 save percentage.
 
These were dark times for Boyle.
 
He credits the coaching staff at UMass Lowell for giving him a chance to show that he was more than what he was in Amherst. Boyle says that as his situation at Amherst worsened, he considered the unthinkable: giving up hockey. If he never transferred, he may not have ever emerged from that slump or risen to become one of UMass Lowell's best all-time goaltenders.
 
"[UMass Lowell] took me from my lowest point in my hockey career and made it into something that I never could have imagined. I pretty much owe everything to them," said Boyle.
 
Boyle's professional career is only just heating up, and this has a lot to do with his maturity as both a player and a person. His success in Lowell and San Diego did not just come naturally; Boyle has put in countless hours training and growing his game. He keeps a level head no matter how difficult playing professional hockey may become. This comes from keeping in mind the reason that he still is playing, the reason he did not give up back in Amherst: he loves playing hockey.
 
"You're playing the game that you love and you can never take that for granted," Boyle said. "It's a lot of work, it's straining on the body, it's a long season but… like I said, you're playing a sport for a living so you gotta love it."
 
Boyle says that he learned a lot his first year in professional hockey, which carried over to his second full season of play. Despite a few rough patches in the beginning of the season, he was able to pull himself out of it and more than hold his own in San Diego.
 
"I got my confidence back. I think that was the biggest thing for me, just having the confidence in myself. Once I got that I really settled into my own for the rest of the year," said Boyle.
 
The foundation for that confidence was something he developed at UMass Lowell. Boyle credits the coaching staff for his development and success as a professional player. Boyle even comes back in the summers to train around four days a week. It helps that his fiancée is from nearby Manchester.
 
Boyle says "there's a reason" he makes it a point to train in Lowell in between seasons.
 
"It helps develop me into not only a better goalie, a better hockey player but also a better person. Norm, Cam, and Dev do a great job with the guys here. It's absolutely incredible and I saw that firsthand transferring from another school," he said.
 
Boyle says that he has constant support from the people he has met at UMass Lowell. Two of his best friends are former roommate A.J. White and River Hawks' assistant coach Cam Ellsworth. "I don't even consider him a coach anymore I think of him more as a friend. We go golfing all of the time in the summer," said Boyle.
 
He formed close bonds at UMass Lowell, so much so that he has invited his teammates to his upcoming wedding. Boyle says that contact did not lapse after graduation; if anything, his former teammates and the experiences that he had at Lowell made him even stronger while he was across the country in San Diego.
 
That support has been unconditional since he arrived in Lowell.
 
"The support that they gave me, the faith that they showed in me once I stepped foot on this campus is a pretty special thing for me to look back on," said Boyle.
 
When he reflects on the player and person that he was before arriving at UMass Lowell and achieving what he has since then, Boyle remembers the uneasiness of that time period. If he could tell that Kevin Boyle anything, he would advise him to keep doing what he is doing, even if it does not seem to work. It will, in time.
 
"Never give up. Things will happen that are out of your control and some unfortunate circumstances will happen that you really just don't have any control over," said Boyle. "If you lose sight of your end goal, your end dream, once you lose sight of that then it may never come back. But if you keep your eye on that dream and stay focused on that dream, have faith and have the support that you have around you, I think that you can achieve some pretty cool things."
 
Boyle maintains that professional athletes need to love what they are doing to succeed and stay fulfilled. Outside influences such as money, fatigue or other hardships may threaten to tamper with an athlete's enjoyment of their sport, but it is nonetheless important that they hold the purity of the love of the game close. Being a professional athlete is not just games or championships won but the day to day grind of people thrown together to achieve a common goal.
 
Hellebuyck hopes to lead a gritty Winnipeg team to its first-ever Stanley Cup after being thwarted in the Western Conference Final by the upstart Vegas Golden Knights. Folin joins an equally hungry squad in Philadelphia which still smarts from a hard loss to the Chicago Blackhawks in the 2010 Stanley Cup Final. Wilson and Hutton ground the young Buffalo Sabres as they try to fight their way up the Eastern Conference standings, making good on all of those early first-round picks of years past.
 
None of them would be where they were if they did not love to play hockey. It is just as likely that the combined experiences of Hellebuyck, Folin, Wilson, Hutton and Boyle at UMass Lowell contribute as much to their professional success.
 
In any case, loyal River Hawk fans will adopt as many favorite teams as they must to support their former players, whether they be in Winnipeg, San Diego or Buffalo.
 
 
 

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