By any account, Taylor Makar had a solid three-year stint as a forward for Massachusetts.
In three seasons with Minutemen, Makar played in 85 games, including all 36 in 2023-24, putting up nine points in four goals and five assists with one game-winning goal. The previous year, Makar led the Minutemen with 10 goals.
But one look at the stat sheet shows that Makar’s transfer to Maine this season has done the senior a world of good. Makar enters the final weekend of the regular season as the Black Bears’ second leading scorer with 16 goals and 11 assists, including his first career hat trick in a 4-1 win vs. Vermont last Friday. The performance helped earn Makar both Hockey East Player of the Week and Player of the Month honors.
“We got the best version of him right now,” Maine coach Ben Barr said. “It’s been great for him and great for us.”
This weekend, Makar returns to the rink where his brother Cale’s name hangs in the rafters as the Hobey Baker Award winner in 2019. The two-game series between Maine and UMass starts Friday.
Though he expressed no bitterness toward his former school during a recent media availability, Taylor said he was happy in his new surroundings.
“I kind of just thought I needed change, try a different avenue, something like that,” Taylor said. “But I’m happy to be helping the team out. (If) I could grow my game, as well as helping the team, that’s really what I wanted to do — grow as a hockey player and kind of make my identity.”
With 10 games on the Hockey East slate this weekend to close out the regular season, all of which will affect the final tournament seedings in some form, the Maine-UMass series stands out as pivotal. The Black Bears enter with an outside shot at the regular-season championship and the top seed in the conference tournament should they accumulate at least five of six possible points in the series and Boston College loses in regulation to Merrimack on Saturday.
With so much on the line for both Maine and UMass, Taylor Makar said he’s expecting a playoff-like atmosphere this weekend at the Mullins Center.
“That’s exactly how we’re going into this week,” Taylor said. “It’s going to be exciting and fun to play.”
If Maine takes all six points vs. UMass, BC will need to win in regulation or a shootout/overtime to be champs and the No. 1 seed.
UMass currently sits in sixth place in the Hockey East standings and is very much alive for a shot at a fifth seed or higher, which would give the Minutemen a bye into the tournament quarterfinals. Currently, UMass trails Providence by three points entering the weekend. Only the top five seeds receive a bye.
“I wouldn’t call it a ‘must win’ but they’re all huge,” UMass coach Greg Carvel said. “We all know what we’re fighting for. We all know what’s at hand. At this point of the year, coaching’s fun, because you don’t need to worry about desperation or motivation. It’s usually there. In every direction, players are feeling it.”
The Minutemen are 4-1-2 since the start of February and while they don’t need to win out, they can’t afford much of a slip either. Though firmly on the PairWise bubble, where UMass sits 12th, the Minutemen have a 78 percent chance of making the NCAA tournament according to playoffstatus.com.
“It’s no different than the last six, eight games we played,” UMass coach Greg Carvel said. “Huge implications. Should be nice to win Friday. I think that would put us in a good spot and keep our momentum going.”
