The UMass hockey team is hoping its good fortune can continue in the desert this weekend. 

After knocking off Bentley in their season opener on Saturday, the Minutemen traveled to Las Vegas on Wednesday and are set to open the Ice Breaker Tournament against Omaha on Friday before taking on either Air Force or Minnesota on Saturday. 

Friday’s contest is set to begin at 7 p.m. at Orleans Arena. 

While an early season showdown, how this tournament goes may have major tournament implications for the Minutemen. 

Omaha finished 11th in PairWise last season to lock up a spot in the NCAA tournament while the Gophers finished seventh to go to the postseason. Being major non-conference games, securing a pair of strong results over the weekend — and with the margins of earning a tournament bid being slim — could play a big factor in whether UMass ends up going dancing in March. 

“I look at it as we have to play an Omaha team who was right there around us trying to get into the tournament,” Minutemen coach Greg Carvel said. “I imagine this game will have big implications for us at the end of the year. It’s extremely important that we take some steps forward. I didn’t mind our game at Bentley but Omaha will be the next step and I think our players will be ready for that. I’m not concerned about that. I look at all the games on our schedule and there’s probably five or six that will have major implications on our NCAA possibilities and this is one of them so we’ll do everything we can to be ready to play.”

It will be a good chance to see the Minutemen play unfamiliar opponents. UMass has not played Omaha or Air Force under Carvel’s tenure while it last played Minnesota in the 2022 NCAA Tournament. That requires extra preparation from the Minutemen staff to make sure the team is up to speed on the personnel and tactics of their opponents. 

That becomes more difficult not knowing who they will be playing on Saturday. In the four-team tournament, the winners of each game on Friday will square off on Saturday while the losers of both games will play each other as well. 

“It’s a bit more work,” Carvel said. “I’ve never coached a game against Omaha or Air Force. I have against Minnesota so usually you play a team a couple times — we’ve played Denver five, six, seven times over my tenure at UMass — you get a good feel for how they play. Omaha is a team I have no experience with. I don’t know the coach well so I will jump into video [Tuesday] and most of the plane ride [Wednesday] to have something set for Thursday.

 “When you play three teams you need to prepare for, my assistants do a lot to help me,” Carvel added. “I’ll focus on Omaha and they’ll focus on the other two teams.” 

One area of improvement from the opening weekend would be the power play. 

The Minutemen were just 25-125 in man-up situations last year and on Saturday against Bentley, went 0-4 on the power play. In UMass’ scrimmage against RPI on Sunday, the Minutemen were 0-5 on the power play. 

Scott Morrow and Ryan Ufko led the unit last the three years, and with both departed, Carvel will need to come up with the right mix to get the group going. 

"One of the bigger things on my list now is figuring out the power play,” Carvel said. “Kind of gone with two even units to see if we can go a full two minutes with a top level power play. May switch that up this week and go with a one and a two. Power play let us down last year and I need to make sure it doesn’t let us down this year.”

With its forward group, the Minutemen figured they’d be able to light up the scoreboard this year. 

Through one game, that proved to be true. UMass tallied five goals against Bentley, three coming from sophomore Aydar Suniev and one each from sophomore Jack Musa and freshman Daniel Jencko. 

Kenny Connors had the lone goal on Sunday against RPI. Production up and down the forward line will go a long way to the Minutemen having success this season. 

“Suniev had the hat trick,” Carvel said. “We all know he’s a goalscorer and that’s what he wants to do. He’s going to shoot. Musa could have had a hat trick too. He had a goal, he hit the post and had a breakaway. We expected those guys to continue to raise their game. [Dans] Locmelis, Connors, [Cole] O’Hara, [Michael] Cameron, there’s a whole list of them. We’re fortunate to have a lot of depth up front. We didn’t see the goals against RPI but that was an unusual game going from an intense game on Saturday night to a 3 o’clock exhibition against a team rearing to go. We played five lines and it was tough to get the energy going.”