Lindberg leads UMass back to Frozen Four
Goalie has allowed four goals in five postseason games
The UMass Minutemen’s advance to the Frozen Four tells a tale of two goaltenders.
UMass emerged victorious from the East Regional in Bridgeport, Conn., with a 4-0 victory over Bemidji State on Saturday. UMass (18-5-4) will compete in its second Frozen Four in three years when the Minutemen engage two-time defending champion Minnesota Duluth (16-10-2) in the semifinal on April 8 at PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh, Pa. UMass went to the NCAA title game for the first time in program history in 2019 but fell 3-0 to Duluth.
“I’m very excited to be headed back to the Frozen Four,” said fifth-year UMass coach Greg Carvel. “The difference this time is that I think we are all pretty excited to go in there with some experience.
“The last time it was eyes wide open and now, we kind of have a feeling of how it is run. I think that experience will be very helpful for us and I think this team deserves to be in the Frozen Four.”
The Minutemen captured the program’s first Hockey East championship with a 1-0 victory over UMass Lowell at the Mullins Center on March 20. UMass secured the No. 2 seed in the NCAA tourney and dispatched Lake Superior State and Bemidji behind the outstanding goaltending of Filip Lindberg, a 6-foot-1, 188pound import from Espoo, Finland. Lindberg is a great admirer of Bruins’ goalie Tuukka Rask but feels his game better resembles another Finish goalie, Nashville’s Juuse Saros.
“I have always been a Tuukka fan, he is probably the best Finish goalie of all time and growing up I tried to be like Tuukka,” said Lindberg. “But honestly if I compared my game to someone in the NHL, I would say I play more like Juuse Saros.
“I’m not a huge guy and he’s not a huge guy and I try to play like him. He’s really quick and he knows what to do in critical situations.”
Lindberg, a Minnesota Wild draft pick, has allowed just four goals in five postseason games, including two shutouts. He is 9-1-4 with a 1.32 goals against average, a .946 save percentage and four shutouts.
UMass got off to a good start and was routinely ranked in the top 10 despite experiencing a haphazard stretch of stops and starts due to the university’s COVID protocols.
The goalie that guided UMass through a sevengame win streak from late December to early January was Matt Murray, a 6-foot-1, 195-pound senior from St. Albert, Alberta, Canada. Murray went 9-4-0 with a 2.01 goals against average, a .913 save percentage and three shutouts.
Carvel could have easily chosen to ride Murray, but he felt an obligation to give Lindberg a chance in the second half of the season. Lindberg took advantage of the opportunity and backstopped the Minutemen to the Frozen Four.
“I don’t think I’m a hard coach to play for as a goalie, it was more of the circumstances where I have two (equally) related goalies and that put me in a tough situation trying to make the right decision,” said Carvel. “Filip has always had the potential to be a really strong goaltender and what happened this summer is he came to me and said, ‘I need to play more.’
“I got angry at him and I said, ‘Then be better. I know Matt is a good goalie but if you want to play, be better than him.’ I said the same thing to Matt.
“I said, ‘I know you guys both aren’t happy so make it easy for me.’ Matt made it really easy for me in the first half of the year, he won seven in a row and then Filip came back and he’s lost one game. I told Filip this summer, ‘If you want to play every game get a .940 save percentage and be under two goals a game’ and that’s what he did.”