At 9:38 AM -0500 2/13/97, Lara Chrsitine gray wrote:
> Interesting comments made out there in the world of L about these rivalries.
> The ones mentioned no doubt are intense. However, one more rivalry which I
> have seen pick up over the last few years is the "War" between Hockey East's
> Umass-Lowell and Merrimack. Granted these two schools can't compete for lets
> say a St. Cloud-Minnesota or a BU-BC etc etc, however it is an intriguing
> match up.  Umass-Lowell hails from the lovely Lowell which has been deemed
> the Mill City in massachusetts. Merrimack is located in beautiful North
> Andover and has been quite recently been reffered to as "The other Mill City"
> This has the match up between these two teams even more intense. WHo is the
> real Mill City? More importantly, Who has bragging rights to 495. Although
> this maybe the most powerful rivalry brewing in the east, it still has a ways
> to go before it can reach the capacity of a Minnesota vs anybody, or
> Anchorage vs. Fairbanks and so on.
 
This is a rivalry which used to be unequaled back in the DivII days, the
late 70s and early 80s, but it cooled off as the teams moved to DivI.  Part
of that was a change in recruiting - both teams used to recruit heavily
from the Boston area when in DivII, thus you had the same situation as
BC-BU where kids grew up knowing each other.  As they moved up, they had to
look more to Canada for players to compete with the DivI schools that were
taking the best from the local area, and the result was players who who
didn't know much about the history of the rivalry between Lowell and
Merrimack.
 
But also, when Merrimack moved to DivI, they did not have as much success
as Lowell did, and in fact Lowell won about 10 straight in the series
during a recent stretch.  That also made it tough for people to get excited
about the matchups.  It seemed that every time the teams met in DivII, a
championship was on the line - regular season, ECAC, or NCAA - but lately,
it's been just another game.
 
Things began to heat up a bit this year when the two teams were close in
talent and Merrimack was able to break Lowell's streak, winning two of
three this season.  In fact, the Lowell-Merrimack broadcast on NESN a few
weeks ago had a lot of the charm of the olden days - rock 'em sock 'em
hits, up and down action, etc. - and Kurtz/Norton said it was one of the
best games they'd seen all year.  If the two meet in the HE tourney this
year - and it is quite possible - it could go a long way towards getting
this rivalry back on the road to where it used to be.
 
To answer John Whelan's question...while the old-timers remember the days
of the bitter rivalry, I would venture to say that today, each school might
call a different one its chief rival.  The most emotional and hotly
contested games each of the last few years for Merrimack have been against
BU - in fact, Merrimack has led or tied seven of the last eight regular
season games vs BU after two periods, and has a better winning percentage
over that stretch against BU than every other HE team except Maine and
Lowell.
 
Something always seems to happen when BU and Merrimack get together,
whether it be period-ending brawls, fantastic finishes, or whatever.  And
maybe the highest compliment paid to a Merrimack team in recent years was
made by BU assistant Bill Berglund (he formerly of Northeastern), who said
at the 1995 New England Hockey Writers Dinner that playing Merrimack in
three tight games down the stretch and in the playoffs helped prepare BU to
win the 1995 NCAA Championship.
 
Along the same lines, I would think that Lowell folks see BU as their main
rival nowadays, perhaps with UMass-Amherst a close second.  But no one is
under any misconceptions as to whether or not BU's #1 rival is BC.
 
Closing this out...Ralph Baer asked about rookie goaltending tandems.
Current Merrimack seniors Martin Legault and Eric Thibeault were #1-2 for
their team as freshmen in 1993-94, and Legault was All-HE as a sophomore.
Today the line is a little cloudier...Thibeault has improved dramatically
over the years to the point where he has earned the right to split duties
with his partner in crime.  Still, it is not like Harvard's Hughes-Roy
where those two helped the Crimson to a national title in their rookie year.
 
Next year Merrimack will probably feature a rookie along with
sophomore-to-be Cris Classen, who has seen limited time as a third-stringer
behind the two seniors, both of whom have played a key role in the
Warriors' resurgence this semester.
 
---                                                                   ---
Mike Machnik                [log in to unmask]               *HMM* 11/13/93
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