The pair of Minutemen connected face to face for the first time as Bolts.
Two years ago, UMass head hockey coach Greg Carvel reached out to alumnus Mitchell Chaffee to ask for a favor.
After coaching Chaffee at UMass, Carvel drew comparisons between the NHL forward’s game and one of his current players in then-sophomore forward Lucas Mercuri. Carvel connected the duo through the college team’s mentorship program, and the players have stayed in touch since.
Fast forward to July 2025, and both players now hold contracts within the same NHL organization, the Tampa Bay Lightning. Chaffee and Mercuri met in person for the first time this week when Mercuri was attending 2025 development camp, his first with the team.
"I'm not there to pick his game apart or anything like that. It was more or less just anything he needed, I was kind of support for him and trying to give him opportunities and information coming from someone that's already been through his shoes,” Chaffee said of being a mentor. "I was like, ‘Hey, ask me anything about hockey, life, nutrition, whatever.’"
“It’s great to see him here.”
Chaffee is fresh off a 2024-25 season which saw him set career highs in NHL games played (66), goals (12), assists (six) and points (18). He was wrapping up an offseason workout at TGH Ice Plex in Brandon this week when Mercuri walked up to introduce himself.
Carvel’s mentorship program at UMass connects current players who aspire to play professional hockey with alumni who advanced to the NHL. When Mercuri was a sophomore, Carvel sat him down to watch Chaffee play, pointing to similarities in their game. Mercuri saw it right away, too.
Mercuri and Chaffee have exchanged texts about once a month over the previous two seasons. Occasionally Mercuri would send him questions, and other times it was Chaffee checking in after watching UMass games when he had time.
"He's somebody to lean on when I have a question,” Mercuri said of Chaffee.
"When I was named a captain at UMass, I asked him how it was being a captain. Being a free agent this year, I was asking what he did, how he was feeling with it. And he was somebody who would always send a paragraph back, just checking in. If I played well one game, he'd say, 'Hey, watched your game. Thought you played great.' So I thought it was awesome,” Mercuri said. “You know, he doesn't have to do any of that stuff. So it comes with the alumni program at UMass and people that really care about the program, and obviously just good people.”
The best advice Chaffee gave him?
“He just said, ‘Be yourself, be authentic and everything will come natural to you.’ So I took that to heart a little bit,” Mercuri said. "And he may not even know that I took that to heart. He was probably just texting me, checking in and just being a nice guy. But obviously he plays in the NHL and worked his way to the NHL. So just listening to him, that advice meant a lot for sure.”
Mercuri, 23, describes himself as a power forward.
“I'd say I'm a 200-foot center that can win face-offs. Just a power forward, somebody who likes to play the game below the hash marks, get around the net and not afraid to throw their weight around, retrieve pucks on the forecheck and make plays in tight and just get to the net.”
Mercuri was originally drafted by the Carolina Hurricanes in the sixth round of the 2020 NHL Draft before the Lightning traded for his rights on March 30. Mercuri then signed a two-year, entry-level contract and played six games on an AHL tryout with the Syracuse Crunch after posting 10 goals and 31 points in 40 NCAA games in his senior season in 2024-25.
He described his first development camp with the Lightning as “world class”.
“Just from the development staff to the equipment people, just everybody. The people here are awesome,” he said. “Everybody wants you to get better. You ask a question, and there's a specific person from a specific field in what your question is, and it's awesome. So I'm very grateful to be here.”
Mercuri looks forward to his first full season of professional hockey this fall, and Chaffee is also excited to see his mentee take on that challenge. Mercuri has people who believe in him in Tampa Bay, and that includes a fellow UMass alum in No. 41 in the Lightning locker room.
“He’s grown a lot,” Chaffee said. “I think it’s using your size, and obviously he’s gotten a lot stronger. Throughout watching him from the first time to the last game at UMass, I feel like he’s gotten so much better and he’s grown so much.”
“I think this next step in pro hockey will only kind of catapult him even more, so I think it'll be really good for him to continue to grow and develop. His growth at UMass I thought was tremendous, and I think they do such a good job there at working with players, whether it's on the ice or off-ice, and I think he was just kind of another product of UMass hockey.”
