By Eoghan Kelly, News Staff
The men’s hockey team dropped both games of its home-and-home series with Merrimack College last weekend, a 5-2 rout at Matthews Arena on Friday and a 4-2 decision the following night at Lawler Arena in Andover.
Northeastern is now winless in five straight games and finds itself slipping lower in the Hockey East standings with a 2-4-1 record and only five points.
“It’s tough when you’re on the road. [Merrimack] did a good job,” head coach Jim Madigan said after Friday’s game. “It’s a tough game, it’s a physical game, but you need to be able to handle adversity as it comes your way. I didn’t think we did a good job of that tonight.”
After starting the season with two wins in four nights against ranked teams, the Huskies jumped to No. 14 in the country in their first national ranking since October 2009.
But last weekend’s performance bumped them from the United States College Hockey Online (USCHO) Top 20 and leaves them on the outside looking in after three consecutive weeks at Nos. 14 and 15.
Northeastern is still only two points removed from second place in the conference and comfortably in fifth place – roughly where most people expected them to be a month into the season.
Thus far the Huskies have been a remarkable balance of good and bad play. For every positive there is a negative to counteract it, which is the root of many of their problems.
Goal differential:
The good: The Huskies come ready to play every night and attack their opponents early and often. They have a plus-5 goal differential through the first 20 minutes of games, and their 11 first-period goals are the most in the conference.
The bad: Northeastern has serious trouble sustaining that momentum and early-game intensity for a full 60 minutes. The Huskies have yet to score a second-period goal and have been outscored 14-3 after the first period.
At the University of New Hampshire on Oct. 26, Northeastern squandered a 3-1 first-period lead and eventually lost 4-3 on a last-minute goal by sophomore forward Nick Sorkin. More recently, they conceded four unanswered goals after two goals in the first 20 minutes Saturday at Merrimack. It’s a trend other teams are starting to notice.
“They’ve done a real good job early in the season getting off to good jumps,” Merrimack head coach Mark Dennehy said Friday night. “It’s something we really tried to concentrate on, we talked a lot about.”
The freshmen:
The good: Northeastern’s freshmen have contributed tremendously so far all over the ice. Together, they combined for six goals and 12 assists through the first seven games – including forward Kevin Roy’s team-leading 3-3-6 numbers – and have been mainstays on both the power play and penalty kill units. Roy had a goal and an assist last weekend, and forward Mike McMurtry was a bright spot with his first career goal in a two-point game Saturday.
The bad: Northeastern’s young lineup has struggled to shut down opposing teams’ top scorers, conceding a combined 26 points (eight to Boston College, six to UNH and 12 to Merrimack) to oppositions’ top four point-getters in its first seven games.
Physicality:
The good: The Huskies brought with them to this season a new identity of aggressive offensive forechecking and no-nonsense, physical play in the defensive zone. Their play in opposing teams’ zones proved beneficial in their first two games as takeaways and cycling wore defenders down and led to goals. Defensively, the Huskies have shown improvement in their ability to keep forwards to the outside of the zone, clog up the middle of the ice and fearlessly block shots. Freshman Colton Saucerman, sophomore Dax Lauwers and senior Drew Ellement have already combined for 37 blocks.
“They had some great blocked shots [Friday night],” Dennehy said. “I know I wouldn’t want to get in front of some of those things.”
The bad: Maintaining those principles is difficult when not all players are on the ice, something that’s been common so far. The Huskies have a Hockey East-high 101 penalty minutes to go along with a second-worst 75 percent penalty kill rate. Their power play has continued to struggle, too, producing only three goals in 32 attempts and previously went through a four-game span with no man-advantage goals.
“We just gotta play smarter,” Madigan said Friday after the Huskies amassed 27 penalty minutes and their second game misconduct of the season. “You can’t put teams on the power play in this league and you can’t give ‘em 5-on-3s for two minutes or almost a minute and a half and then try to kill a five-minute major off. You just can’t do it. You gotta play smarter.”
Shooting:
The good: Northeastern has demonstrated more of a willingness to shoot the puck, especially when other options aren’t available, and average 27.9 shots per game, a slight increase from their 2011-12 average (26.7).
The bad: The Huskies continue to be outshot and average six fewer shots per game than their opponents, including conceding a season-high 44 to UNH in a 0-0 draw Oct. 27. The shots they do take are failing to find the back of the net, evidenced by their 2.00 goals per game average, tied for seventh in the conference with the University of Vermont. Of the five top-scoring forwards Northeastern returned from last season – seniors Vinny Saponari and Garrett Vermeersch, juniors Braden Pimm and Cody Ferriero and sophomore Ludwig Karlsson – only one (Saponari, 1-3-4) has more than two points and none have more than one goal.
“We’ve been working that in practice the last few days, just getting pucks to the net,” Madigan said. “We had some good looks again today and the puck’s not finding its way behind that goal line, and so a little frustration mounts at that point.
“The last three games our goal production’s down,” Madigan continued. “We’ve got obviously, I think, some talented forwards and we’re just being a little too cute or not getting pucks to the net.”
Goaltending:
The good: With the exception of the 4-3 loss at UNH (5-1-1, 3-1-1 Hockey East) on Oct. 26, goaltending has been steady for Northeastern. Senior Chris Rawlings made 63 saves on 66 shots to earn wins in the first two games of the season, and senior Bryan Mountain’s 44-save shutout earned him Hockey East Co-Defensive Player of the Week last week.
The bad: The Huskies have struggled with closing out periods and allowing late goals. At Boston College (6-1-0) on Oct. 20, they conceded a 5-on-3 goal with 1:28 left in the second period that ripped away the momentum they had developed in the previous minutes. In last weekend’s series with Merrimack (4-3-1, 3-1-1 Hockey East), the Huskies allowed four goals in the last 1:14 of periods.
It’s early in the season. Madigan and crew are still trying to put all of the pieces together.
They can find comfort in the fact that they’ve been here before. Last year the Huskies infamously started 1-7-2 before a six-game win streak brought them back to .500. Even before the Madigan era, Northeastern had a 2-8-3 record through 13 games in 2010-11 under former head coach Greg Cronin and eventually came within a goal of making the 2011 Hockey East championship game.
This weekend is the time to turn things around when Northeastern hosts the University of Alabama-Huntsville for a two-game homestand Saturday and Sunday nights. The Chargers (0-7-1) have won only six games over the last two seasons.
The Huskies are in need of a change of pace to break out of this rut. To get it, they will need to do something they haven’t done since the first week of the season – display more good play than bad.
