By Sarah Moomaw, News Staff
As the Huskies and University of New Hampshire Wildcats squared off for the second time in 24 hours, Northeastern was out for revenge from the previous night’s last minute 4-3 loss in Durham, N.H. But after 65 minutes of hockey, neither team could claim a victory as the game ended in a scoreless draw.
“Both goalies stood out. It was a good game, there were some chances,” head coach Jim Madigan said. “It’s tough to get points in the this league. I’ve said that over and over again. Never happy with a tie, particularly at home … we wanted to come up with two points here tonight, but we’ll take the point and work on the things we need to get better at.”
Making his first start since Jan. 10, 2010, senior goalie Bryan Mountain was confronted early with five shots on goal in the first six minutes of play. He finished the game with 44 saves on 83 shots attempted by the Wildcats.
Northeastern mustered up only nine shots on goal in the first period, all blocked or reeled in by Wildcat sophomore goalie Casey DeSmith. The Wildcats tested Mountain 17 times before the first buzzer.
The two sides racked up a combined 12 penalty minutes after physical plays at NU’s blue line and behind Mountain. With men down, neither side capitalized as the game went scoreless into the first intermission.
Left wings senior Robbie Vrolyk and junior Cody Ferriero each connected for three shots on goal during the second, but with no success. At 5:54, Vrolyk took a soft break away from senior forward Garrett Vermeersch towards the UNH end, but DeSmith was there with the grab.
With 30 seconds left in the second period, senior forward Vinny Saponari took the puck from Braden Pimm amongst traffic in front of the Wildcats net, but as throughout the previous 39 minutes, the Huskies’ effort wasn’t enough to break the scoreless game.
Freshman forward Kevin Roy opened the third period with a clean break away from the neutral zone, but DeSmith blocked the shot to the lower right corner before making the whistle blowing grab at 2:36.
Less than a minute later, Pimm took a run along the left side of the ice and wristed a shot off to DeSmith who came up with the block, but Saponari couldn’t get a stick on the rebound. Northeastern matched UNH’s 10 shots on goal for the period, but fell in the overall column 34-44 by games end.
As the five-minute overtime period started, Mountain’s night of tests continued with two quick shots off Wildcat sticks. But after matching penalties were issued with 15 seconds left on the clock, neither team could come up with the win.
