Fitchburg State Men’s Hockey wins the 2025 MASCAC Championship. (Photo via Fitchburg State Athletics)

Our season previews continue as the 2025-2026 Men’s & Women’s Division III hockey regular season nears closer. Today, we look at the men’s side of the Massachusetts State Collegiate Athletic Conference (MASCAC).

The MASCAC features:

Anna Maria
Fitchburg State
Framingham State
Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA)
Rivier
Salem State
Westfield State
Worcester State

2024-2025 Overview

Last season, we saw a thrilling ending to the conference as we now know it, with Plymouth State & UMass-Dartmouth departing for the Little East Conference. Plymouth State had won every conference title since 2019 and in their conference retirement tour season, they were upset as the 1-seed by the bottom seeded MCLA Trail Blazers.

MCLA had a Cinderella-like run in the conference tournament led by their sophomore goaltender Matthew Gover, who transferred/committed this offseason to Division II Huntingdon (Alabama) to play for their men’s golf program, his college hockey career has come to an end for now. The Trail Blazers finished the regular season 4-19-2 but defeated the 1-seeded Plymouth State 2-1 with Gover making 43 saves, they then defeated the 2-seeded Anna Maria 2-1 with Gover making an incredible 63 saves, but the story would end in the championship as Fitchburg State defeated MCLA 3-1 as Gover made 28 saves on 31 shots.

Mat Gover (Atkinson, N.H.) backstopped the Mass. College of Liberal Arts to two MASCAC tourney wins. (John Starsja/MCLA Athletics)

In the title game, it was an interesting matchup because although MCLA had a terrible regular season, they only lost to the Falcons 1-0 in overtime and the defeated the Falcons 2-1 in overtime… If MCLA was going to have any matchup versus one of the better teams in the league, this was the team I would imagine they wanted. In the end, Dean Fuller made a return to the NCAA tournament, where his Falcons fell to the national runner-up Utica University 5-1 on the road in an early 1pm EST puck drop.

As I mentioned in our Men’s D-III Conference Realignment article, the entire league should be happy with the departure of HC Craig Russell and his Panthers simply because of their utter dominance in the league. The Panthers leave the MASCAC with a total of seven conference championships, 11 regular season titles, & seven NCAA tournament appearances in 15 years (excludes covid season).

One last note on last season, Salem State had a resurgence year under first year Head Coach Chris MacInnis, finishing with a record of 19-7-0 following the retirement of longtime HC Bill O’Neill, who was with the program since 1981. O’Neill put together many solid seasons with the Vikings, but managed to only go .500 or better once in his final six seasons. 19 wins was the most wins for the program since 2015-16 when they went 22-6-0, making the NCAA tournament, but prior to that, it was a program best since 1993-94 (23-6-3). Look for Salem State with the exit of Plymouth State to really challenge for the MASCAC title year-after-year if this program really is back to what many know it’s capable of…

Returning Production

Looking at the league and the returning production via our guy Scott Huston, we find some interesting results:

Rivier, a team who had a rough start to the preseason, losing 13-0 to Plattsburgh, returns a minimal 31% of production from last season, I’m not sure how the Raiders will fare this season, granted, not every team they play is the caliber of the Cardinals, but regardless, losing that amount of production for a younger program will always be hard to overcome.

MCLA’s numbers may be slightly inflated on our production tracker due to the unforeseen changes regarding the transfer portal and coaching staff changes, so we will disregard their numbers for now. However, losing their star goaltender isn’t going to help things either as Gover was the biggest reason for their late season push and close games.

Westfield State returns about 82% of production across the board, goals and assists. I think this will help them become that middle of the pack team that could potentially breakout and make some noise come conference playoff time.

Salem State, coming off one of their best seasons in the program’s recent history, should be able to build off what they left, returning about 67% of production.

Side note, Worcester State’s former Head Coach Jay Punski accepted the Salve Regina Men’s Hockey job, the Lancers will now be led by HC Bob Deraney.

Dark Horses

As Scott Huston & I discussed on our Men’s D-III Hockey Preseason Podcast, personally, I see this being a no ‘dark horse’ league if we go off the MASCAC Men’s Preseason Coaches’ Poll and regular expectations. It’s difficult to call anyone a dark horse with the exit of Plymouth State simply because now everyone legitimately has a shot (it’s not as if they didn’t before, last year for example, but it was considered a shocking upset if the Panthers didn’t come out of this league with the automatic bid to the NCAAs every year).

Fitchburg State is the easy pick if you’re looking to make one, but I like Anna Maria or Salem State personally to make a run at it and potentially get that coveted auto bid. The vote total is a whole six points between first and third (FSU – 46, AMC – 43, SSU – 40) and then a 13 point drop off to fourth (27). No one other than MCLA really returns many players and MCLA has had their transfer portal and head coaching issues recently with former Buffalo State assistant coach Marcus Gloss recently accepting the head coaching position following the departure of Jeremiah Ketts.

The only one I’d jump on that isn’t a top three favorite would be the Owls of Westfield State as mentioned they return a fair amount of production for this season. I think if anyone outside that big three is going to do it, it’ll need to be someone with a lot of production returning, so I’ll go with the Owls if an outsider is going to make that jump this season.

Final Thoughts

My final thoughts on this league are losing Plymouth State is a huge loss for the conference itself, but that simply means it’s time for others to have their time now that a major favorite is now gone. Salem State? Fitchburg State? Anna Maria? We’ll see who’s the next to receive the coveted auto bid and give it a shot at the ultimate prize in March.