CANTON -- In his announcement that he was leaving to coach the University of Massachusetts men’s hockey team, St. Lawrence University Men’s Hockey Head Coach Greg Carvel made special note of his debt to the man who preceded him behind the Saints bench.

Carvel, a Canton native, said that “As an alumnus of St. Lawrence University, I leave with a heavy heart and great appreciation for what the University has done for me, in particular, Joe Marsh.”

After several years successfully coaching at the college he attended and the team he once played for, Carvel announced last week that will be leaving the North Country once again, this time to coach the University of Massachusetts Minutemen in Amherst.

A Canton native, an SLU alumnus, and Saints team captain who went on to get years of experience with the National Hockey League, Carvel will be the 14th head coach of the Minutemen.

Carvel spent the last five seasons at SLU, the press release from UMass said. He boasts a head coaching record of 72-63-15 over four seasons. Prior to his return to Canton, he spent 15 seasons in the professional ranks. He made two trips to the NHL Stanley Cup Finals while a member of the staff in Anaheim and in Ottawa.

Carvel is the first ECAC coach to have won a major league award as a player and its Coach of the Year Award. He was the 1993 Outstanding Defensive Forward award winner. He had 38 goals and 85 assists for 123 points in 131 games with the Saints, according to the UMass announcement.

Carvel played one year of professional hockey in Sweden and then became assistant athletic director and assistant hockey coach at Canterbury Prep. He went on to earn a master's degree in sport management at the University of Massachusetts in 1998 and was an assistant coach at Amherst College in 1996 while pursuing his degree.

Carvel's college coaching resume includes mentoring four All-Americans, two ECAC Rookies of the Year, an ECAC Player of the Year, three Hobey Baker finalists and one Hobey Hat Trick finalist. The Saints coach was selected as an assistant coach for the 2015 U.S. Men's National Team and spent the better part of May 2015 in the Czech Republic as part of the senior coaching staff that led the U.S. squad to a bronze medal finish.

Carvel took over an 11th-place team in 2011-12 and has since guided the Saints to eighth, fifth, second and fourth place finishes, respectively. In 2015-16, his club finished with a record of 19-14-4 and a final NCAA Pairwise ranking of 19th. The three ECAC teams that finished ahead of SLU advanced to the NCAA Tournament.

He began his professional coaching career as director of hockey operations for the Lowell Lock Monsters of the American Hockey League. He joined the Anaheim Ducks as scouting coordinator in May of 1999, adding video coordinator to his duties in 2002 and earning a promotion to assistant coach in 2003. He joined the Ottawa Senators as an assistant coach in 2004 and was on the staff until the summer of 2011. Both the Ducks and the Senators made it to the Stanley Cup Finals during his time as an assistant coach.