By Jason Mastrodonato, News Staff
Northeastern might have been one of the hottest teams in Hockey East during the season’s final two months, but if there was one thing that was going to stop the Huskies from advancing to the conference tournament title game, it was the penalty box.
Top-seeded Boston College went 3-for-6 on power play opportunities and survived a wild finish Friday night, ending the sixth-seeded Huskies’ season with a 5-4 win in front of 16,000 people at the TD Garden.
“Giving up three power play goals in a game is a recipe for disaster,” head coach Greg Cronin said. “And I was really disappointed with that.”
The Huskies received votes in the national polls the past couple weeks, but they needed a win over BC and a win in Saturday’s Hockey East title game to earn a spot in the NCAA tournament.
“I really was hoping we would get to the tournament, I really was,” Cronin said. “We could have done some damage in the tournament because our team had been through so much adversity.”
The Huskies jumped ahead of BC when senior captain Tyler McNeely put away his own rebound, the fourth straight game NU has scored the first goal.
But as it has been between these two teams all season (the final scores in four games this year were 7-6 OT, 7-7 OT, 2-1, and 5-4), the lead wasn’t kept for long.
First-team Hockey East All-Star Brian Gibbons tied things up just three minutes after the McNeely goal, corralling a loose puck from behind the net and lobbing a quick shot on sophomore goalie Chris Rawlings, who was frozen in his net as the puck beat his stick side.
BC, the No. 2 team in the country, took the lead on a power play goal midway through the second period, when Kevin Hayes beat Rawlings top-shelf.
NU senior forward Wade MacLeod, who finished the year leading the team with 21 goals, quickly evened the score, slotting a wrist shot 25 seconds later.
But forward Steven Whitney scored what Eagles’ coach Jerry York called the goal of the decade for Boston College later in the second to give the Eagles a lead they never lost.
Whitney carved through two NU defenders, getting tangled up by freshman Jamie Oleksiak, but not before he cut across the ice and lifted a no-look backhander over Rawlings’ left shoulder.
Then, the dagger came in the final minute of the period.
Skating with the puck on a 2-on-2, freshman forward Braden Pimm was whistled for a questionable interference penalty to give the Eagles a power play. BC defenseman Tommy Cross buried a goal with 18 seconds left and the Eagles went into the locker room with a 4-2 lead.
“I told the official we thought we were getting a power play,” Cronin said. “We were literally putting out our power play group. That’s a big call. That’s a call that put us down 4-2 in the semifinal. So you know, you have to live with that.”
Cronin said the team didn’t look energized in the first two periods, and after Rawlings allowed four goals on 27 shots, the coach opted to go with freshman Clay Witt for the final 20 minutes.
“I thought the first period for us particularly was a little bit measured and vanilla,” Cronin said. “We didn’t have the same jump and desperation. The second period was a little bit better, not much better, and that’s why I made the goaltender change between the second and third to try to give our guys a little bit of a different outlook.”
Witt stopped five of the six shots he saw in the final period, getting beat only after making the initial save on a BC power play that put the Eagles up, 5-2.
But the Huskies stormed back in the game’s final minutes, fighting for their lives in the single-elimination format.
“Anytime you’re playing a team that if you beat them it ends their season, it’s tough to beat them and that was certainly the case tonight,” Cross said. “Northeastern played really strong and we expected nothing less from them.”
With two Eagles in the penalty box, Cronin pulled Witt to give NU a 6-on-3 advantage and sophomore Garrett Vermeersch scored with a slap shot from the point.
Again with the extra attackers, MacLeod put away a rebound in front of the net, cutting the Eagles’ lead to one with a minute left in the game.
But that’s all the Huskies would get against the league’s Bauer Goaltending Champion, John Muse.
“The last goal, as soon as I scored I looked up at the clock to see how much time was left,” MacLeod said. “And I think there was a minute and something left, so I felt good, but it was just too little too late.”
Boston College advanced to the title game for the sixth time in seven years, beating Merrimack 5-2 on Saturday.
Northeastern finished the season 14-6-8, 10-10-7 in Hockey East.
