UMass rebuilding team, but wants to play best like U

Spent awhile poking around the web for info on UMass, the Gophers' next opponent. Have to say this, it's an interesting team.

Minutemen's coach is Don (Toot) Cahoon. He is 61, in his 11 year at UMass. Team starts quick last season, then slid back second half. Finished 18-18-0, 13-14-0 in Hockey East. Coaches pick UMass to finish ninth out of 10 teams this season.

UMass lost five top scorers to graduation or early departure. Played exhibition game Saturday at Mullins Center practice rink in Amherst -- before 350 fans -- and lost 4-3 in OT to New Brunswick.

Danny Hobbs, a junior forward, scored two goals for UMass. He is a player to watch. As a skater, he is to skating what Roy Hobbs was to baseball in the movies.

Toot calls Danny Hobbs a world class skater, one of fastest in country.

UMass was 2x6 on pp, Michael Pereira has other pp goal for Minutemen. New Brunswick was 0x2 on pp and trailed 3-1 in third period beore rallying.

Starting UMass goalie Paul Dainton has 18 saves and gave up only one goal in first two periods. Freshman Jeff Teglia gave up three, including two 20-some seconds apart in third period. NB outshot UMass 29-28.

Dainton is not one of them. He is the team captain. "Paul can't do it by himself but he has certainly come in great shape," Toot said.

Dainton is from Iqaluit, Nunavut. Never heard of it? Nunavut is Canada's largest territory -- as big as western Europe, -- way up north in Canada. Iqaluit is its capita; it has about 6,299 people and is on the south coast of Baffin Island. The territory has about 30,000 people.

The Minutemen, besides playing the Gophers, also play at Wisconsin on Dec. 30-31.

"The message there is to be the best, you got to play the best," Toot said. Have to ask coach Cahoon how he got that nickname. Maybe he liked trains as a little kid or maybe he ... better not go to my second idea.

UMass has eight players from the commonwealth of Massachusetts, eight from Canada including Dainton, and one from Minnesota. The Minny kid is sophomore D-man Anthony Raiola, 6-2, 202. His previous team was North Iowa of the NAHL, he played his high school hockey at Minnetonka just like Gophers freshmen Max Gardiner and Justin Holl.