By Eoghan Kelly, News Staff
With only 10 Hockey East games remaining on the 2011-12 schedule, the playoff hopes of the Northeastern men’s hockey team are beginning to crumble.
The Huskies lost a pair of pivotal league games last weekend, dropping back-to-back match-ups in a home-and-home series against No. 14 UMass Lowell, 4-0, Friday and 3-2 in overtime Saturday. The losses set the Huskies back to 8-11-3 overall and 4-11-2 in Hockey East, good for only 10 points in the league.
“You preach consistency and three of these four games we’ve lost by a goal,” head coach Jim Madigan said. “At the end of the day, we’ve just got to find a way to win hockey games. That’s it at the end of the night, getting two points … There’s now a sense of urgency for us to get league wins.”
The Huskies currently sit ninth in the league, ahead of only the University of Vermont. Only the top eight teams earn bids to the Hockey East Tournament.
Northeastern has lost four straight games, all to ranked teams and three of the four by one goal. The losing streak follows a stretch of eight games between Nov. 18 and Dec. 31 where the Huskies were unbeaten and knocked off a No. 2 team three times.
Five of those games were against non-conference opponents, and Madigan admitted the Huskies’ out-of-conference success doesn’t necessarily translate into Hockey East wins.
“We came off a good stretch and then we’ve had four league games,” Madigan said. “We still have to get back to a point where we’re playing an entire 60 minutes where we have compete, we have effort, we have execution and we have discipline. You need all four elements and we haven’t had all four elements over the last four games.”
In front of a home crowd of 1,785 Saturday night, Northeastern proved to be its own worst enemy. Before the game was even 11 minutes old, three Huskies took minor penalties.
Despite the Huskies giving up early power plays, the penalty kill unit fought off the Catamounts. They shut down Lowell’s first opportunity without allowing a single shot on goal, and allowed the United States College Hockey Organization’s (USCHO) No. 21 power play unit only two attempts on junior goalie Chris Rawlings during its second man advantage.
At the beginning of Lowell’s second power play, all eyes were on Northeastern. Sophomore forward Braden Pimm, playing for the second time since missing two games for an unspecified team rules violation, disrupted a pass along the Northeastern blue line and made a break toward the Lowell net. When he reached the slot, he looped a shot around a River Hawk defender and – in an unlikely goal – inadvertently knocked the puck past sophomore goaltender Doug Carr with his arm after being taken down.
The referees initially waived off the goal but ruled it legal after reviewing the play. The shorthanded goal gave Northeastern a 1-0 lead 8:09 into the game and 12 seconds into the second Lowell power play of the game.
Lowell head coach Norm Bazin said the initial no-goal call was overturned after the referees deemed the puck was coincidentally deflected into the net.
“[The referee] overruled it on the tape because, on the tape, [Pimm] made no motion with his arm to direct it into the net,” Bazin said. “That was [the referee’s] reasoning for overturning that initial call of no goal, so I have to respect his decision.”
When junior center Garrett Vermeersch took a hooking call at 10:43, it was one penalty too many for the Huskies. River Hawk freshman winger Scott Wilson one-timed a shot under the blocker-side arm of Rawlings to the tie game 1-1 with just 22 seconds remaining on the penalty.
The goal was Wilson’s 11th of the season, the most by a River Hawk rookie since the 1997-98 season.
“He scored tonight and he’s certainly been opportunistic, the last few games especially,” Bazin said. “But if you look back at our statistics I think there’s several guys that have chipped in at different times and several guys who have game-winning goals. So we’ve been fortunate to have a lot of balance, I guess, in the scoring from our team’s standpoint.
Vermeersch avenged his penalty only 32 seconds into the second period when he took the rebound of a shot from junior forward Vinny Saponari and popped it over a sprawling Carr for his fifth goal of the season.
Another Northeastern mistake led to a Lowell goal not even three minutes later. After freshman forward Adam Reid turned the puck over in the Huskies’ defensive zone, junior River Hawk Colin Wright ripped the rebound of a shot from freshman Terrence Wallin over the glove of Rawlings to tie the score 2-2 at 3:04 in the second.
The score remained deadlocked at two apiece for the remainder of regulation. After advancing to overtime, the Huskies finally fell victim to their own lack of execution.
After senior Michael Budd lobbed the puck out of the Lowell defensive end, three Huskies converged to retrieve it in the neutral zone. The puck deflected off a Husky and then eluded sophomore defenseman Anthony Bitetto on the Northeastern blue line, allowing sophomore Lowell forward Derek Arnold to scoot in, deke to his forehand and slide the puck past Rawlings for the game-winner after 2:50 of overtime.
Arnold said it was the second time the River Hawks had tried the lob play in the game.
“My linemate, Michael Budd, there just kind of threw a hoister up in the air and hoped for a lucky bounce,” Arnold said. “Second time around, we got lucky and it trickled through their [defense]man’s legs.”
Madigan said that the game-winner was just another example of a bounce that didn’t go Northeastern’s way in the extra period.
“We’ve been in this situation three times this year where we’ve lost in overtime,” Madigan said, referencing overtime losses to Boston College (4-3) and Merrimack College (3-2) earlier this season. “Tonight was just a high lob that went off one of our defenseman and then got a bounce and their guy got in behind us and obviously won the game.”
The Huskies out-shot Lowell 31-25 Saturday night, marking only the fourth time in the 2011-12 campaign that the Huskies managed to out-shoot their opponent.
But a night earlier, Northeastern struggled to get any offense going.
Lowell put up 38 shots to the Huskies 20 Friday night, while earned five power plays. But the Northeastern penalty kill was effective once again, denying Lowell on all five power plays.
It was Northeastern’s own power play that proved to be its downfall. The Huskies failed to convert on all five of their man-advantages and mustered only one shot on goal in their final three power plays.
Instead, the Huskies gave up a shorthanded goal to sophomore defenseman Dan Furlong on their second power play opportunity, falling into a 3-0 hole 10:49 into the second period. The Huskies already allowed a first period to goal to Wilson – his first of two on the night – and one to Arnold 1:27 into the second.
Wilson added to what proved to be an insurmountable lead when he beat Rawlings and gave Lowell a 4-0 lead with only 17 seconds remaining in the second period. Wilson has tallied at least one goal in each of his three games against the Huskies this season.
The shutout was the first time the Huskies failed to score a goal since Oct. 9, 2010, when they dropped a 2-0 decision to Boston College at Matthews Arena.
Madigan said, although Lowell played well, it was the poor performance of his own squad that stood out to him.
“We didn’t play very well,” Madigan admitted. “We were soft, we didn’t work hard on the pucks. [Lowell] beat us to all the loose pucks. They wanted it a lot more than we did.”
Northeastern is slated to face Hockey East No. 10 University of Vermont this weekend, when they will travel to Burlington to play a pair of must-win road games to keep pace in Hockey East. The Catamounts have won only three games since Nov. 22.
Madigan said the games could pull the team out of its funk and earn them some momentum going into the final third of the season.
“As we go down the stretch here, you have to come away with points on a weekend,” Madigan said. “I told our guys, no one’s gonna feel sorry for us. It’s only us. We’ve been here before unfortunately this year, where we were 1-7 and we pulled ourselves out of it. We’ve gotta do the same thing at this point in the season.”
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