“This happened last year, you never want to start out like this,” senior captain Mike McLaughlin said. “When it happens, it happens and you just have to battle your way out of it.”
The Huskies sole win of the season came on home ice against UNH in a 4-0 shutout Oct. 14.
“We’re going to lose hockey games during the course of the year,” head coach Jim Madigan said after practice Monday. “You play 34 of them, but the one thing we can control is our effort, our competitiveness, our willingness to sacrifice and we didn’t think that we had all three of those areas going for us on Saturday.”
In an effort to change things up, Madigan started sophomore goalie Clay Witt for the first time this season, giving junior starter Chris Rawlings a night off.
“I would have liked it to go a little bit different,” Witt said. “But, I just tried to get out there and stop pucks.”
Witt stopped 33 of 38 shots on the night.
“In this league, you need to get two goalies going, it doesn’t have to be an even split but you have to get two going. He earned the start,” Madigan said in the post-game press conference.
Northeastern’s offense couldn’t match the Wildcats, as the Huskies rang just 17 shots at UNH goalie Matt Di Girolamo, with only two getting across the goal line in the second period.
Junior forward Justin Daniels put the Huskies on the board at 5:56 of the second period to reduce the deficit to 2-1, for his team-leading fourth goal this season.
Five minutes later, UNH regained its two-goal lead as senior forward Kevin McCarey took a pass from freshman defender Trevor van Riemsdyk for his first goal of the season and UNH’s third goal of the night.
Before the second period ended, freshman forward Ludwig Karlsson netted his second goal of the season to return the goal gap to one, at 3-2.
A brief power outage on campus at UNH left skaters and fans in the dark until it could be restored 15 minutes later.
“There were a few distractions going on with the lights going out,” said McLaughlin. “Everybody was on a different page, and UNH played well and we didn’t.”
Returning under the lights and already on top, 3-2, UNH came out strong, and Austin Block scored his first goal of the season for the Wildcats fourth of the game.
UNH took advantage of a Husky penalty, scoring their fifth goal of the game on a power play goal by senior forward Stevie Moses, for the final of 5-2.
The power play goal was the first given up by Northeastern defense since the first period of the 1-4 loss at Merrimack Oct. 21.
“We gave [UNH] a lot of easy offense and didn’t make it hard on them,” junior forward Vinny Saponari said. “They thrived off of it.”
The Huskies only sat for four penalty minutes, allowing just two Wildcat power plays, down from the beginning of the season when they were taking upwards of seven per game.
“The last couple of games [penalties] have been low, they’ve been down,” Madigan said. “Obviously we’ve been talking about discipline and addressing it. I think we are still playing as hard but not getting the penalties.”
The Huskies couldn’t capitalize on UNH’s penalties, leaving four power plays uncapitalized upon.
The Huskies will face No. 7 Merrimack in a weekend series starting Friday night at Merrimack at before taking on the Warriors at Matthews Arena Saturday at 7 p.m.
“We haven’t played well on the road yet this year, so it’s something as a team we need to focus in on,” Madigan said. “The players know that. We’ve gotten off to slow starts and dug ourselves a hole and it’s going to be imperative that we come out strong and get the first goal and let the opposition chase us a little bit.”
