By Eoghan Kelly, News Staff
As students and fans file into Matthews Arena next Wednesday night, the scene will seem familiar as the men’s hockey team opens another season, but the team and fans will be looking to erase last year’s sour ending.
The Doghouse and pep band will seat themselves above the ice in the Matthews balcony, accompanied by the traditional beginning-of-the-season mantra of the loyal Northeastern fan-base: “We’re putting last season behind us – this is our year.”
But this year – perhaps the most unfamiliar aspect of it all – the fans aren’t just telling themselves that. They believe it.
“It’s definitely a different team than last year,” Doghouse student section co-leader and senior journalism major Sean Hathaway said. “Everything I’ve heard … has just been how much missing the playoffs by one point really hurt them inside, how they didn’t want that to happen again.”
Civil engineering major Mike Chafetz, echoed his co-leader’s sentiment.
“I think it’s going to be an exciting season,” he said. “I think it’ll be a different style of hockey in general … Missing the playoffs is disappointing; it’s tough to take as a player, way tougher to take than as a fan I’m sure.”
To a degree, the Huskies have certainly committed to ridding themselves of the memory of their disappointing 2011-12 campaign, during which they trudged to a 9-14-4 (13-16-5 overall) Hockey East record and missed out on the final conference playoff spot by one point.
According to senior forward and captain Vinny Saponari, the way last season ended left a sour taste in the team’s mouth.
“The summer’s long. After last season, it made it even longer, just losing the way we did by one point and missing the playoffs,” Saponari said. “We definitely changed our attitude. We have a whole new focus. Not much is the same as last year.”
The Huskies only lost one senior, forward Mike McLaughlin, to graduation, but seven additional underclassmen said their farewells to fans at the end of last year.
Redshirt-junior forwards Alex Tuckerman and Steve Quailer joined McLaughlin, choosing to leave the team instead of play out their final year of NCAA eligibility. Quailer signed a two-year deal with the Montreal Canadiens in June.
Gone, too, are three of Northeastern’s top four defensemen. Sophomore Anthony Bitetto signed a two-year contract with the Nashville Predators, classmate Luke Eibler transferred to Northern Michigan University and junior Drew Daniels – accompanied by his brother, Justin – left the team for undisclosed reasons.
Sophomore forward Rob Dongara, who struggled to see consistent playing time in 2011-12 after winning the team’s Rookie of the Year award the season prior, transferred to the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
By the end of the line changes, the Huskies had lost 39 percent of their offensive production and nearly 68 percent of their power play scoring from the 2011-12 season.
But 18 players will return this season, including five of Northeastern’s seven leading scorers: sophomore and assistant captain Ludwig Karlsson, Saponari, senior forward Garrett Vermeersch, and junior forwards Braden Pimm and Cody Ferriero.
“Eighteen returning players is still a lot of players to return with some real good quality and leadership,” second-year head coach Jim Madigan said. “There are some real good players in this program that we’re fortunate are going to be juniors and seniors this year.”
Saponari and Madigan both expressed confidence in returning senior goaltender Chris Rawlings – and his .917 career save percentage – to bounce back after an underwhelming performance in 2011-12.
“Chris [Rawlings] is one of our hardest workers on the team and he knows just as well as we do that last year wasn’t the way he wanted to play,” Saponari said. “I’ve seen him in the weight room, on the ice longer than most people, so I know he’s been working as hard as he can.”
Despite the number of returning players, the door has been opened for Madigan’s first recruiting class to replace the team’s off season departures.
The good news, Saponari said, is that the incoming group has the talent to pull it off.
“A lot of them have experience in pretty high competitive levels, so that’s exciting,” he said. “They come in looking really physically big and strong and should make an immediate impact on our team and against other teams.”
Northeastern’s incoming recruiting class is headlined by freshman forward Kevin Roy, the 2011-12 United States Hockey League (USHL) Player of the Year who broke the league’s scoring record a year ago with 54 goals and 104 points. Kevin and his goalie brother, Derick, decommitted from Brown University in late July and announced their plans to attend Northeastern on Aug. 6.
“I’m really happy the way me and my brother ended up here,” Kevin Roy said after practice Wednesday. “I think it’s a really great place, great program, we have a real good team and I think we can do some special stuff this season.”
Five other newcomer forwards will join Kevin Roy in the fight for game-day roster spots, including freshmen Cam Darcy, Mike McMurty and Ryan Belonger.
Drew Ellement is the only senior of the defensive line, leaving the rest to be underclassmen. He and sophomores Josh Manson and Dan Cornell will share the workload with some or all of the five freshmen Madigan and his coaching staff ushered in during the offseason.
Madigan said that up to three rookie defensemen could dress on any given night, but he’s not worried about inexperience.
“You always have a little concern with inexperience at any position,” Madigan said. “[There] are still four returning upperclassmen who played a lot of games.”
Also atop Madigan’s list of things he isn’t worried about is the team’s power play, which converted only 21 of 153 chances (13.7 percent) last season. Madigan said it has continued to improve through pre-season practices.
Northeastern will have an early opportunity to test it in the home-opener next week. The Merrimack Warriors were ranked 32nd nationally in penalty kill (81.2 percent) last year.
But first, the Huskies must first face St. Francis Xavier University (Canada) in an exhibition game at Matthews Arena on Sunday afternoon. St. Francis Xavier beat Northeastern 8-5 in a preseason game on Oct. 2, 2011.
Sunday’s game will not count. Instead, it will serve as a benchmark to gauge what this team still has left to improve.
But for the first time, the fans, alumni and university will see the response from the team that was a point away from the offseason seven months earlier.
“I guess after last year, missing the playoffs, we don’t deserve to be picked higher,” Saponari said. “They go off what we were last year and what they think we have. [But] when you’re inside the locker room and inside our weight room, we feel we’re a lot higher than [eighth], so we’re not worried about what they pick us as.”
