The UMass hockey team is making its shortest road trip of the season on Saturday. 

After a foray into Hockey East action this past weekend — where the Minutemen walked away with a shootout win and a loss against UConn — UMass will make the short trip down Interstate 91 to Springfield to face AIC on Saturday. Puck drop is set for 1 p.m. at the MassMutual Center. 

Though an non-conference game, there’s plenty of familiarity between the Minutemen and the Yellow Jackets as the two Western Mass. foes have squared off the last three seasons. 

UMass coach Greg Carvel and AIC coach Eric Lang came to Western Mass. at the same time — both joining their programs in 2016 — and each have had success, Carvel leading the Minutemen to a National Championship in 2021 while Lang brought the Yellow Jackets to the NCAA tournament each from from 2019 through 2022, making the matchup an impact one in recent years. 

“I hope it gets people excited,” Carvel said. “I think Eric and I are both very aware that our programs were on pretty similar projections for years 2-6. It’s hard to maintain. There’s too many good teams and the parody makes it hard to do year in, year out. I think our two programs are pretty consistent in what we’re doing. I think both Eric and I would hope this rink would be sold out on a Saturday afternoon for two teams that should have earned the support of a lot of Western Mass. hockey fans.”

AIC hasn’t gotten off to the strongest start this season, starting 0-4-1 before earning its first win of the season against Air Force on Saturday. 

That doesn’t mean the Minutemen (3-3-1) will take them lightly by any stretch. UMass beat AIC 5-3 last year and the Yellow Jackets took the Minutemen to overtime in 2022. 

“I think Eric is one of the best coaches in college hockey,” Carvel said. “To me, he’s right up there. He has that program competitive every year. He had the stretch there of making the NCAA tournament. Watching them play, I’m a bit humbled as a coach. I’m really impressed. They play a really good team game. They have speed, they’re smart and they just reload year after year where it’s not real easy to reload at AIC. It’s not easy to reload anywhere but I have great respect for Eric and I expect us to have to go in there and fight tooth and nail to get a victory.”

The UMass offense has been its strength through seven games, scoring 26 goals thus far. 

The shootout win against UConn last Friday didn’t come easy, however, as Aydar Suniev tied the game with under a minute to go after the Minutemen were forced to pull the goalie. 

On Saturday against the Huskies, UMass found itself in 3-0 hole late in the second period. Linden Algren and Jack Musa followed with goals for the Minutemen but UMass was unable to get the game-tying goal across, falling 3-2 in Storrs. 

While much of the focus early in the season has been on the young defense core, Carvel said he is still looking for more ways to generate scoring chances. 

“There’s details to our offensive game where we should be scoring more,” Carvel said. “I’m not upset with our offensive effort but we did as a staff look into things we can do to create more goals. There’s small details that I thought we were better at last week. Being around the net more, we had certain players bring more to the table. I’m not here fighting over our offense at all. We have a good group but we’re always trying to get better and we have some ideas for this week.”