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LOWELL, Mass.—In their final road trip of 2021, the No. 15 UMass Lowell River Hawks (10-3-3, 8-2-1 Hockey East) pay a visit to Canton, N.Y., to square off against St. Lawrence (4-7-4, 3-3-2 ECAC) on Wednesday, Dec. 29 at 7 p.m.
 
SCOUTING THE RIVER HAWKS
UMass Lowell enters tonight's game, the first post winter break contest, with a 10-3-3 / 8-2-1 record.  They moved into sole possession of first place in Hockey East with a weekend sweep of Vermont.  The club is 3-1-1 in its last five games.  The River Hawks are 5-3-0 on the road and 5-0-3 on the familiar ice of the Tsongas Center.  The River Hawks sit in the number 14 slot in the USA Hockey Magazine Poll and at number 15 in the USCHO Poll.  It is the team's seventh week in the Top 20 and the number 14 spot in their highest ranking of the season.  Hockey East Coaches, in their pre-season poll, placed the River Hawks seventh in the conference.  They currently sit atop the league standings.  UMass is one-point back and Northeastern is in third trailing UMass Lowell by two.  The 2021-22 squad shows eight new faces; six are freshmen, two are transfers. Andre Lee leads the team in goals with ten.  Lee, Carl Berglund and Matt Crasa top the points chart with twelve.  Berglund leads the team in assists with ten.  Crasa has seven-goals and five assists.  Goaltenders Henry Welsch and Owen Savory split time in goal evenly a year ago, but this year Savory has shouldered the heavier workload.  Savory has gotten the call a dozen times and has been among the nation's best.  He starts the second half of the season with a 1.23 GAA and a .950 save percentage.  He has four shutouts.  Welsch has started four times with one shutout and a 2.71 GAA and a .872 save percentage.
 
SCOUTING THE SKATING SAINTS
After 25-days off St. Lawrence returns to the ice tonight with a 4-7-4 / 3-3-2 record. When last on the ice the Skating Saints snuffed out a four-game losing streak with a 4-3 win against Colgate.  St. Lawrence is 0-0-4 in overtime and 1-1 when the extra-point has been determined through the use of a shootout.  The team is 1-4-1 at home, 3-2-3 on the road and 0-1-0 in games played at a neutral site.  The ECAC Coaches' Pre-Season Poll placed St. Lawrence in the number five spot.  The team did receive one first place vote.  They are currently in a fifth-place tie with Rensselaer, six points behind first place Cornell.  Eighteen different players have scored goals, but only one has more than two.  Kaden Pickering leads the team with five-goals.  Pickering and Aleksi Peltonen top the points chart with eight.  The Saints' power play has struggled.  With a 6.7-percent success rate it is 11th in the conference.  Senior Goaltender Emil Zetterquist, a pre-season ECAC All Star, has started 14 of the team's 15-games.   He enters tonight with a 3.02 GAA and a .895 save percentage.
 
ALL-TIME SERIES vs. St. LAWRENCE
This is the 24th meeting between the two in a series that dates back to 1980.  UMass Lowell leads the series, 13-9-1.  The River Hawks have won three of the last four contests. The most recent meetings between the two schools was during the 2017-18 season.  The clubs split a pair of shutouts.  The two have twice met in in-season tournaments, each winning once.   UMass Lowell was the winner in the 2009 Icebreaker Tournament in Omaha, 3-0.  The Skating Saints returned the favor, 3-0, in the 2017 Catamount Cup.
 
AT THE APPLETON
This is the 11th time that UMass Lowell and St. Lawrence have played one another at the 3,200 seat Appleton Arena.  It is the first time they've met since the building underwent a recent series of renovations.  The teams have split the previous ten games, 5-5-0.  The River Hawks have authored two-shutouts in the building.  The first was on December 7, 2001.  Cam McCormick made 27-saves in recording the 4-0 win.  It was his fifth shutout of the season and the seventh of his career, at that time a UML record.  The second blank sheet was posted by Christoffer Hernberg, 5-0, with 27-saves of October 21, 2017.  That shutout was the first of his career.
 
IT'S BEEN A WHILE
It's been a while, almost four years since UMass Lowell and St. Lawrence played one another.  It's been 1,460 days, or, three-years, 11 months, and 30-days.  That last meeting was on December 30, 2017, at the Catamount Cup in Burlington, Vermont.  The Saints were winners, 3-0.
 
WHEN LAST WE MET
UMass Lowell and St. Lawrence last met during the 2017-18 season.  They met twice; once in Canton, New York and once in Burlington, Vermont as part of the Catamount Cup.  Both games were shutouts.  The first meeting in October went down as a River Hawk victory, 5-0, as four different players scored goals.  Jake Kamrass had two and Christoffer Hernberg earned the shutout with 27-saves.  The second meeting saw St. Lawrence prevail, 3-0.  Joe Sullivan's first period shorthanded goal was the game winner.  Daniel Mannella made 35-saves to earn the win.
 
SCORING vs. St. LAWRENCE
No current UMass Lowell player has scored a point against St. Lawrence while wearing a River Hawk uniform.  Only one current River Hawk has played against the Saints in a UML uniform.  That's grad student Connor Sodergren who was held pointless against St. Lawrence in two-games as a freshman in 2017.  Grad student defenseman Nick Austin has a goal and five-points against St. Lawrence, but all of that scoring came as a member of the Colgate Hockey program.  River Hawk goalie Owen Savory faced St. Lawrence twice as a member of the Rensselaer program and posted a pair of wins including one shutout.
 
GETTING AWAY FROM THE RINK
It has been 17-days since UMass Lowell last played a hockey game but that is not the River Hawks longest break between games during this season.  UMass Lowell had a stretch of 18-days between games two and three on the schedule.  That break was between playing Arizona State on October 3rd and Michigan State on October 22nd.  The River Hawks were to have played LIU, but the games were lost when Sharks went into COVID-19 protocols.  It should be noted that the winter break has been even longer for St. Lawrence, 24-days.  The Skating Saints last played December 4th, a home victory, 4-3, against Colgate.
 
NON-CONFERENCE, NO PROBLEM
UMass Lowell has more than held its own in non-conference play over the last ten-plus years.  UMass Lowell is 94-41-9 (.684) in non-conference games since the 2011-12 season.  Removing the non-conference games against Hockey East schools the River Hawks show a 65-27-8 (.690) record.    The club is 2-1-2 in non-conference games this season.
 
VERSUS THE ECAC
UMass Lowell has played more non-conference games against members of the ECAC than any other conference.  The River Hawks hold an edge, 106-77-13 .574, against schools representing the ECAC.  That number includes schools that have since moved to other conferences.  They are 95-62-11, .598, against current members of the ECAC.  The River Hawks are 24-10-4, .684, against ECAC schools since Norm Bazin took over behind the River Hawk bench.
 
FIRST PLACE
The UMass Lowell 2-1 regulation win at Vermont moved the River Hawks into sole possession of first place in the Hockey East standings with a conference record of 8-2-1.  It is the first time that UMass Lowell has held sole possession of the top spot since November 18, 2019 when the club had a record of 4-1-3.  It is the latest in the season that UMass Lowell has held sole possession of first place since January 25, 2016, when the team had a 10-3-3 record.  That was one point better than both Boston College and Notre Dame.
 
8-2-1 IN CONFERENCE
At 8-2-1 in Hockey East play, this is the River Hawks second best-ever record at the eleven-game mark in the conference season.  The best-ever 11-game start was 8-1-2 in the 2014-15 season.  It is the third time in 39-years that the River Hawks have won eight of their first eleven league games.  UMass Lowell also started the 1986-87 and the 2000-01 seasons with 8-2-1 records.  The best record with just one loss was 8-1-2 after eleven games during that 2014-15 season.
 
DOUBLE DIGITS BEFORE AT THE BREAK
This is the tenth time in UMass Lowell's Division I history the team has entered the winter break with at least ten-wins.  The last ten-win first half was in 2019-20 when the team was 10-4-4 at the break.  Twice in the past UMass Lowell had a dozen wins at the midpoint.  In 1986-87 the team headed home for the holidays with a 12-2-1 record and in 2001-02 the club was 12-2-0 at the point of final exams.
 
THE SECOND HALF
After putting double digits in the win column during the first half of the season, the second half is a story yet to be written.  Only once in the last four years has UMass Lowell been able to reach double digits.  That was in the 2018-19 season when the club went 11-6-1 to finish 19-13-5.  The team won 14 or more games in five of Norm Bazin's first six years behind the bench.  The River Hawks compiled their best second half during the 2012-13 season when the club went 22-4-1 after the winter break and finished 28-11-2.
 
RED HOT FRESHMAN
Matt Crasa's two-goal game against Vermont was his third multi-goal game this season.  The last freshman to have as many as three in a season was C.J. Smith who had four two-goal games during the 2014-15 season.  The record for multi-goal games by a freshman was set by Greg Bullock during the 1993-94 season.  The last freshman with a hat trick was Nick Master who turned the trick against American International during the 2015-16 season.
 
10-GOAL 1ST HALF
Andre Lee had ten-goals at the winter break, the first River Hawk to hit that number in the first half since C.J. Smith scored ten before the break during the 2016-17 season.  Smith finished that year with 23-goals, the last River Hawk 20-goal scorer.  Lee scored his tenth goal is his 15th game.  Jeff Daw in 1994-95 and Ben Walter in 2004-05 hold the record for the fewest games needed to reach ten-goals.  Each accomplished the feat in nine games though it should be noted that Daw scored his 10th and 11th goals of the season in that game nine.  Walter did go on to set the record for goals in the first half with 16.
 
IN THE CLUTCH
A "clutch goal" is defined as a goal that either ties the score or gives the team the lead in a hockey game.  Matt Crasa tops the River Hawks "Clutch" list with six.  He's scored seven goals this season, five have given UMass Lowell the lead, a sixth has tied the game.  That's 85.7% of his goals coming in the clutch.  Crasa's other goal gave the team a two-goal lead.  Andre Lee is second; five of his eight-goals this season have come in the clutch.  Four have given the River Hawks the lead, one has tied the score.  Lee also has two which gave his team a two-goal lead.  Lee also has three Game-Winning-Goals.  Four other players have at least two clutch goals.
 
MULTI GOAL GAMES
Sixteen games into the new season and a trio of UMass Lowell players have posted a total of seven multi-goal games.  Freshman Matt Crasa found the back of the net twice in UMass Lowell's 4-2 win at Arizona State in the second game of the season.  Crasa did it again December 3rd against UMass at the Tsongas Center and then again December 11th at Vermont in a 2-1 win.  Sophomore Nik Armstrong-Kingkade added his name to the list finding the net twice, including one shorthanded against Michigan State October 23rd.  Andre Lee added his name to the list October 29th with two goals against Boston University, then he did it again with two-goals including the game winner in a 4-2 win against BC on November 13 and repeated that, two-goals including the game-winner, November 20th in a 3-0 win against UConn.  Five River Hawks posted seven multi-goal games a year ago.  Andre Lee and Charlie Levesque each did it twice.
 
HONORS FOR OWEN
UMass Lowell netminder Owen Savory has been earning accolades on almost a weekly basis during the first half of the season.  Three times he has been named the Hockey East Goaltender of the Week and twice (October and November) he has been named the Goaltender of the Month.  Savory begins the second half of the season with a 1.23 GAA and a .950 save percentage.  Those numbers are a bit lower in Hockey East play, 1.09 / .957.
 
AMONG THE NATION'S BEST
UMass Lowell goalie Owen Savory enters tonight's game among the best in the country in both Goals Against Average and Save Percentage.  The senior netminder carries a 1.23 GAA into this evening's game.  That is number two in the country, trailing just Yaniv Perets, 0.87, of Quinnipiac, and tops the chart in Hockey East.  Savory's .950 save percentage also ranks second in the country and second in Hockey East behind Northeastern's Devon Levi.  His four shutouts also place him fourth among the nation's goalies.
 
AMONG THE NATION'S BEST - Part II
Andre Lee is among the nation's best when it comes to goals per game.  Scoring .62-goals per game (ten goals in 16 games) ranks Lee 15th in the country and fourth in Hockey East.  Ethen Frank of Western Michigan leads the country with 17-goals in 18-games, a .94 average.  Northeastern's Aidan McDonough leads Hockey East with 13-goals in 18-games a .72 average.  Lee also is seventh in game winning goals with three.  There is a five way-tie for second on the list with four-goals.  Lee's three puts him in the number three spot in the conference.  New Hampshire's Jackson Pierson and Providence Brett Berard lead the conference with four.

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