The Merrimack men’s hockey team will play against the top-seeded Providence Friars in the Hockey East quarterfinals at Schneider Arena on Saturday, March 13. The Warriors advanced after a 5-3 win over UMass-Lowell, with Trevor Hoskin scoring twice. Providence, which won the regular-season title, received a first-round bye. The game is scheduled for 7 p.m. and will be broadcast on NESN+ and ESPN+.
This matchup follows a split season series between the two teams. Merrimack defeated Providence 4-2 on November 14, while the Friars won the next night, 3-2.
Head coach Scott Borek said, “Goal tending and special teams. Obviously, they won the league. They’re a very good team. They’re a very deep team. We’re going to need all four lines. We’re going to need all seven defensemen to be successful. And really, if we can get out of the first period, it’s going to be a ballgame. But we have to have to have a good start, because you know they will because they just watched us play. So we just have to have a good start.”
Goaltender Max Lundgren remains an important player for Merrimack after making 23 saves in their recent win against Lowell. Lundgren ranks second all-time in single-season wins by a goaltender at Merrimack with 18 victories and has surpassed 1,000 saves this season—a milestone achieved by only two other goalies in program history.
On offense, Justin Gill and Parker Lalonde were both named to the Hockey East All-Rookie Team this week. Gill scored 16 goals during the regular season—the most by any Merrimack player since Hampus Gustafsson in 2015-16—and maintained a one-point-per-game average through a team-best streak of thirteen consecutive games with points.
Lalonde enters Saturday’s game with 33 points from thirteen goals and twenty assists across thirty-four games and recorded his first collegiate hat trick earlier this season.
The winner of Saturday’s game will advance further into the Hockey East tournament.
