By Eoghan Kelly, News Staff
The men’s hockey team and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst faced off at Matthews Arena Friday night in a game that had major implications on each team’s Hockey East playoff hopes, as the Huskies pulled off the win.
The thrilling 4-3 overtime victory for the Huskies in front of a crowd of 1,785 reordered the Hockey East standings as Northeastern now sits at 7-11-2 (11-11-3 overall), good for 16 points and sole possession of the eighth and final playoff spot with seven league games remaining.
“Two big points for us tonight,” head coach Jim Madigan said after the game. “We’re tied with UMass coming into the game, they had two games in hand on us, it was a four-point game and it was a game that we needed to get that was in our own building. And we found a way to get the two points.”
The Minutemen (9-11-5, 5-9-4 Hockey East) came into Friday night’s game winless in 11 road games this season.
But the way they started the first period wasn’t getting them any closer to their first road victory.
The Huskies jumped on UMass early, getting two goals in the first six-and-a-half minutes of play. Junior forward Robbie Vrolyk continued his hot streak when he tapped home the rebound off a shot from sophomore forward Zak Stone for his second goal in as many games just 1:52 into the contest. Less than five minutes later, freshman winger Adam Reid made it 2-0 with his fourth of the season.
“We just came with a game plan,” Vrolyk said. “We always try to have a good, strong first five minutes and we didn’t do anything special. We just kept to the game plan and kept pucks down low and just tried to get as much pressure as we could on them.”
UMass came roaring back before the first period ended, getting back-to-back goals from sophomore winger Mike Pereira on the power play at 13:37 and junior defenseman Darren Rowe less than four minutes later.
UMass head coach Don Cahoon praised his team for the way they battled back after a less-than-ideal start.
“It looked like it was gonna be a really long night,” Cahoon said: “A couple of breaks and a couple of decent plays, we got those goals and we got back into the game … In the second period, I thought we put on a completely different game. We really sprinted, we looked like we were interested in winning battles, we made some nice plays, scored a nice goal and I thought created a lot of opportunities for ourselves. It swung the momentum.”
Northeastern started the second period with a 28-second power play, but the Huskies were unable to convert. Instead, Pereira made it three unanswered goals for the Minutemen only 2:12 into the game’s middle frame when he gloved a puck down in the Northeastern slot and pinballed it past Rawlings.
A timely turnover brought the Huskies back just more than three minutes later. Junior forward Alex Tuckerman and senior center and captain Mike McLaughlin converged on two UMass defenders in front of their own goal and produced a loose puck for Vrolyk to steal and slide through the five-hole of freshman goaltender Kevin Boyle for his second goal of the game and a 3-3 tie.
Junior forward Garrett Vermeersch was assessed a five-minute major for elbowing at the end of the second period, allowing the Minutemen to play a man up for the first quarter of the final period. But UMass could not get its power play going and squandered the opportunity.
Cahoon said his players were tired, which might have led to power play ineffectiveness.
“If I had to do it over again, I think I might have called a timeout,” Cahoon said. “We had to take a faceoff during that power play, about maybe two minutes left in it, and I chose not to, and I think I would have done that differently if I had to do it over again.”
The teams finished the third period scoreless, forcing the Huskies to play overtime at Matthews Arena for the fourth time this season. They lost each of the three previous games.
The Huskies needed only 22 seconds to buck the trend. Freshman winger Ludwig Karlsson carried the puck out of the UMass corner and handed it off to Vermeersch. Vermeersch found junior forward Vinny Saponari in front, and Saponari tapped a shot that trickled past Boyle for the game-winner.
The goal was Saponari’s fourth of the season. Karlsson’s assist gives him 14 for the season, and the rookie now leads Northeastern with 23 points.
“It was good to reverse the fortunes a little bit, but [I’m] pleased with the way our guys battled back,” Madigan said. “They showed some composure on the bench, knowing that there was still a lot of hockey left.”
Injuries forced the Huskies to be without their second- and sixth-leading scorers, forwards Steve Quailer (junior) and Cody Ferriero (sophomore). Multiple tweets Friday afternoon said Quailer will miss the next three weeks with an ACL/MCL strain, while Ferriero reportedly underwent season-ending knee surgery.
Madigan did not make an official statement regarding the status of the two players as excepted.
Vrolyk said that although the team felt the loss of Quailer and Ferriero being out of the line-up, other players stepped up to get Northeastern the win.
“Those guys are really good players and they’ve helped us a lot throughout the year,” Vrolyk said. “As a team, we know we’ve all got to step up and I think we’ve been doing that and that’s pretty much all we can do.”
The Huskies ride a three-game winning streak into Monday’s semifinal meeting of the 60th annual Beanpot against No. 5 Boston College. The Eagles swept the season series between the two teams, winning each game by a one-goal margin.
Madigan said Friday night’s win gives Northeastern an emotional boost as they try to capture the school’s first Beanpot title since 1988.
“We’ve won three in a row,” Madigan said. “We can now start to talk about the Beanpot. We haven’t talked about the Beanpot for a long time because we’ve got too many good, quality teams in Hockey East we’re playing. We can talk about the Beanpot, focus, but yeah, it’ll give us some momentum.”
