By Eoghan Kelly, News Staff
With only two weekends remaining in the regular season, the Huskies (11-14-5, 7-12-4 Hockey East) remain in a tie with the University of Massachusetts-Amherst for the eighth and final playoff spot.
Northeastern skated to back-to-back ties, 1-1 and 2-2, with PC at Matthews Arena Friday and Saturday nights, and in the process earned two crucial league points to stay afloat in the Hockey East playoff race.
“[Saturday night] felt like a playoff game to be honest,” junior forward Alex Tuckerman said. “I think our team’s happy to come out with a couple of points this weekend. I feel like it’s nice to see a playoff tempo from our team going into the last couple weekends here.”
Junior forwards Garrett Vermeersch and Drew Daniels each tallied a point while skating in their 100th career games Friday and Saturday night, respectively.
Junior goaltender Chris Rawlings turned away a career-high 47 shots in Saturday’s series conclusion against the Friars (12-14-4, 10-10-3 Hockey East). But a pair of soft goals marred Rawlings career night.
The first came 2:36 into the second period, when Rawlings mishandled the rebound of a shot from Friars junior forward Chris Rooney. Rawlings seemed to squeeze the puck between his pads, but it trickled in front of the net for freshman winger Shane Luke to tuck past Rawlings for his fifth goal of the year.
The tally brought the score to 1-1 after Tuckerman put the Huskies on top with 2:26 to play in the opening frame. With Luke serving an interference minor, Daniels wristed a shot from the point that senior center Mike McLaughlin deflected in front of PC senior goalie Alex Beaudry. Tuckerman was waiting at the near post to tap the rebound into a vacated net for his fourth goal of the season with 12 seconds remaining on the power play.
Just four minutes after Rawlings allowed the Friars to equalize, sophomore defenseman Kevin Hart fired a power play shot from the red line that Rawlings attempted to steer to the corner boards. Instead, the puck ricocheted into the top corner of the Northeastern net, giving Hart his second goal of the season and allowing PC to take a 2-1 lead at 6:47 of the second.
“I thought that Chris [Rawlings] settled down,” Huskies head coach Jim Madigan said. “He made some real key saves for us after that second goal … the sign of a good goaltender is when you give up maybe a bad goal or a couple bad goals and how you react and do you bounce back, and I thought he bounced back really well after that second goal.”
Freshman winger Adam Reid drew the Huskies even when he took a pass from Vermeersch, skated past a Friar defenseman and beat Beaudry to the five-hole with 4:59 left in the second.
The goal was Reid’s fifth of the year, while Vermeersch’s assist gave him at least one point in 15 of his last 19 games.
The game advanced to overtime for the second consecutive night. The remainder of regulation played out scoreless, despite two of breakaways from freshman winger Joseph Manno.
Sophomore defender Anthony Bitetto appeared to score a last-second game-winner on a one-timer from the high slot, but replays showed the puck crossed the goal line after the final buzzer.
PC head coach Nate Leaman commended both Rawlings and Beaudry for stifling the game’s offense and keeping the score deadlocked.
“Two pretty good goaltenders there within the league,” Leaman said. “Both of them came up big at big times. I mean, shots 49-35, that’s very rarely a 2-2 game.”
The Huskies were without junior winger Robbie Vrolyk, who suffered a lower-body injury late in the first period Friday night. To compensate, Madigan dressed 11 forwards and seven defensemen Saturday night, including both freshmen Ben Oskroba and Dan Cornell.
Cornell left the game with a head injury in the first period but later returned after getting stitches. Oskroba was dismissed with a game misconduct at 4:39 of the second for a hit to the head of PC senior winger Matt Bergland.
“I thought our guys worked hard,” Madigan said. “This weekend was a hard-fought weekend. There’s a lot of bruises and bumps and cuts and guys on their team who got knocked out of the weekend, guys on our team who got knocked out of the weekend, guys tonight on both teams who got hurt, and then some misconducts. So the kids who were on the ice for both teams battled hard.”
The teams played a hotly-contested game Friday night, combining for only one goal apiece, 44 total shots and 35 total blocked shots.
Junior center Tim Schaller put the Friars on top just 29 seconds into the game when his shot from the left corner deflected through the five-hole of Rawlings for his team-leading 14th goal of the season.
Vermeersch tied the game 6:23 into the first period when he deflected a shot from freshman defenseman Josh Manson over Beaudry’s glove. Vermeersch has a career-high seven goals and 13 assists this season.
The rest of the game played out scoreless, but not for a lack of chances. Both goalies made point-blank saves in the second and third periods. The most notable coming when Beaudry stoned McLaughlin on a shorthanded breakaway with two minutes left in regulation. Each side went on the power play four times – none of which were converted.
Madigan blamed a lack of execution for Northeastern’s man-advantage woes.
“Poor execution,” Madigan said. “We didn’t win enough battles, quite frankly, along the wall to come up with the puck … and then when the puck went in the corner we didn’t retrieve it very well.”
The Huskies’ playoff fate is in their own hands with two-game series against No. 10 University of Maine and No. 5 Boston University remaining. They must win to stay in the race, but they can get help this weekend if University of New Hampshire steal a win in its two-game series.
It is uncertain whether Vrolyk will play in this weekend’s games against Maine. He is currently day-to-day after X-rays following Friday’s game returned negative. Junior forward Steve Quailer is slated to return to the lineup next weekend, but has not been confirmed by Madigan.
Reid said Friday night that the key to Northeastern’s success down the stretch is a factor of the team’s focus.
“We absolutely have to be [focused],” he said. “We have two and a half weekends left now and every game is crucial, every point’s crucial. We have no choice but to focus.”
