By: Jared Shafran, News Staff
As the men’s hockey team enters a big series against Boston University this weekend in the Hockey East quarterfinals, head coach Greg Cronin can only hope to achieve the amount of success the other varsity hockey team at Northeastern had last weekend.
The women’s hockey team may not get a lot of recognition around campus, but what the players did in the Hockey East playoffs this year should not go unnoticed.
After knocking off fourth-seeded UConn 4-0 in the quarterfinals, the team took down top seed and No. 4 in the country Boston University 4-2 at its home rink, Walter Brown Arena, in the semifinals. The Huskies reached the women’s Hockey East finals for the first time in program history and although they lost 3-1 to a very good Boston College team, they have a lot to be proud of.
This is a great example of a team that didn’t have a great regular season, finishing 14-12-8 overall and 6-10-5 in conference play, but came together at the right time to achieve something special. The BU team it defeated on Saturday was stacked with athletes who skated faster and had more experience, but that didn’t matter. Led by their veteran Olympic goaltender Florence Schelling, who made 44 saves, these Huskies just put their heads down and did what they had to do in order to be victorious, no matter the odds.
Head coach Dave Flint made a promise to these women when they joined the program, saying they would have a chance to bring the Huskies back to the elite of their conference as they were in the late 1980s and 1990s when they won three ECAC titles and were a perennial favorite in the Beanpot. Getting to the Hockey East final and skating toe-to-toe with the class of the conference definitely illustrates the major steps this program has taken in the past three years since Flint took the job.
Once the finals ended, Flint reflected on what this season meant for the program both confidence-wise and what it did for the team looking towards the future.
“We can get here,” Flint said. “This team has the ability to get to the finals. That was a big step for us.”
With only 34 schools playing Division I women’s hockey, recruiting is competitive.
“The better kids want to go to the programs that win,” Flint said. “I think we’ve shown that we can compete with the upper echelon. We’ve been in and out of the top 10 the last two years, so that definitely helps in the recruiting process.”
Flint definitely knows how to coach the elite, as he was an assistant coach for the US Olympic team last year in Vancouver.
He managed to inspire his team here at Northeastern, and if the current trend continues, this won’t be the last time this team appears in a championship game.
