Let’s talk about hockey. Not the Bruins, and not the recent Max Nicastro scandal down on Commonwealth Avenue, but good old in-our-own-backyard Husky hockey. You know the kind:  disappointing, then hope-inducing, then extraordinary… and then heartbreaking again. We saw the pattern begin this season with just one win, two ties and seven losses in the first ten games.

Everyone accepted the inevitable:  a lackluster first season from a team with a new coach. We shrugged our shoulders at the losses and continued shouting “North!” “Eastern!” across Matthews Arena for the fun of it. But then the surprises came:  road wins at Minnesota, Notre Dame and Michigan that left campus hockey fans buzzing. The first line was producing like crazy, and just like that hockey wasn’t just back on top at Northeastern, but the Huskies found themselves in the national spotlight.

Veteran fans were still nervous. This is, after all, Northeastern hockey, and the letdown had to be looming. And it came in the form of a 2-1 heartbreak at Fenway Park against Boston College followed by heartbreak at TD Garden, and with that 7-1 Beanpot loss to BC, the gig was up and fans were, quite frankly, over it. The problem with the Beanpot performance was that from the stands, it looked like the players didn’t care. If the players aren’t giving it their all, how can the fans be expected to? It’s one thing to love a losing team, it’s another to love an apathetic one.

The once rowdy, ruthless DogHouse crowd was depleted to a few rows on each end of the ice. Two home games against Maine brought hope, yet again. Injuries were plaguing the Huskies at an inconvenient time, with forwards junior Robbie Vrolyk and sophomore Cody Ferriero both sidelined. By Saturday, junior forward Alex Tuckerman and senior captain and forward Mike McLaughlin were added to that list after sustaining hits to the head. Sophomore defenseman Jake Hoefler was the team’s lone healthy scratch, a testament to how depleted the lineup became by Saturday night. Despite those injuries, assistant captain Steve Quailer made his return after suffering a knee sprain at Vermont in late January and the Huskies looked good, really good. They put together a solid 60 minutes of hockey Friday night and put up a 4-2 victory over the Black Bears, fourth in the conference with the nation’s top scorer, Spencer Abbott, and all of Hockey East’s top three scorers. Had Quailer lit a spark? Did the team finally understand a playoff berth was at stake? It seemed so, but the following night’s brutal 7-1 loss against the same Maine team suggests not.

So where does that leave the Huskies? It’s certainly not the best spot to be in, but this is where they have put themselves. Northeastern is playing twice this final weekend against BU, once across town and once at home. Because the Huskies are tied with UMass Amherst, they’ll basically be counting on two Minutemen losses this weekend as they take on Merrimack. It’s not ideal to be depending on other teams’ success or failure to determine your fate, but that’s the reality of where this season’s poor performance has landed them. Should Northeastern stay tied with UMass, they’ll lose on the tiebreaker and the season will be over.

But the point is, the season isn’t over quite yet. This weekend is critical and while it’s certainly a long shot, success isn’t impossible. We saw a hope-inducing game followed by a disappointment last weekend, so it might just be time for extraordinary again.

– Jill Saftel is a middler journalism student and member of The News Staff