Brandon Montour we hardly knew ye. Montour’s career with Massachusetts hockey has come to an end after just one semester as he will sign with the team that made him a second round draft pick, the Anaheim Ducks. He leaves after only 21 games with the Minutemen, but they were a productive 21. Montour had 3 goals and 17 assists in his time in college and his 20 points were 4th best among all freshmen defenseman nationally despite playing in significantly less games.
Brandon Montour was seen as a huge recruiting victory for Massachusetts hockey coach John Micheletto and his staff. UMass was one of the first to show interest in the defenseman and got him to commit before his stock skyrocketed. Last year in the USHL he won Player of the Year and was drafted by the Ducks in the 2nd round of last year’s draft. NCAA Clearinghouse issues would keep him in the USHL for the first semester of this season. Obviously he had a big impact on the UMass team once he joined, though not enough to keep the team out of the Hockey East cellar. While I don’t blame Montour for realizing his dream of playing pro hockey, you have to wonder why he would’ve gone through all the effort and red tape to play less than two dozen college hockey games only to leave as soon as the opportunity came.
When combined with the loss of Frank Vatrano to the pros earlier in the week this is a huge blow for next season’s prospects. It was thought initially that the Minutemen would return nearly all their scoring from this past season. With Vatrano and Montour departing early it means the team will need to replace a third of their offense. While the team still has a lot of a lot of talent returning, plus a decent recruiting class coming in, it’s going to be tough to make a significant push up the standings without those two players. In a year where Micheletto must win or likely lose his job his task has just gotten a lot harder.
Fear The Triangle - UMass Hockey Blog 
Mel
/ March 14, 2015All is well……………………………………….
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gable
/ March 15, 2015crushing blow to the program
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umassattack
/ March 15, 2015To all my compadres at FTT, I believe this is the death blow to the 2015-2016 Minutemen. Unfortunately for sure, if there are no recruits coming in near the caliber of Vatrano and Montour, and I’m assuming there aren’t any, I think it goes with out saying that the Minuteman will be the early season pick to finish 12th in Hockey East next season.
On defense and in goal this team is in BIG trouble. In my humble opinion we lost two senior defense men, but we really lost nothing on defense. Definitely not in offensive production as the two seniors combined in 25 and 36 games respectively for only 1 goal and 6 assists. And defensively, I know the BIG guy should have been an intimidating factor to opposing forwards cruising down his side of the ice, ….BUT HE WASN’T. And anyone playing on the other teams in H.E. who had already played against him realized he was not a physical threat. He blocked his share of shots, but he was also beaten routinely by opposing forwards, and he had many needless stick penalties from when he tried to stop players from blowing by him. So I don’t think this team loses much on defense with the senior defense men leaving.
However, offensively, UM loses a lot of offense from the blue line. In only 21 games which is about 14 or 15 games less played than all of UM’s leading scorers, Montour was 4th in scoring on UM, and Nationally in less games than most he was the nations 4th leading scoring defense men. He’ll be hugely missed.
UM does have 4-5 very able scorers returning, but they need to be fed those passes to score, and again, Montour is a huge loss here. This is looking really bleak for this coaching staff. It’s time to see if there’s a miracle floating around out there.
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