By Eoghan Kelly, News Staff
When the men’s hockey season ends some four months from now, Northeastern may look back at Friday’s 5-2 thrashing at the hands of St. Lawrence University and realize that was when it had truly hit rock bottom.
As the Huskies glided off the Matthews Arena ice Friday night, they looked demoralized. They had just been outplayed for 60 minutes by an upstart, but beatable, Saints team.
The players’ body language said it all: The Huskies let another game slip through their fingers.
“Credit to St. Lawrence – they played well,” head coach Jim Madigan said after the game. “They had more scoring opportunities and they played faster than we did. Right now we’re just not a very good hockey club.”
Things looked promising early for Northeastern (4-7-1, 2-6-1 Hockey East) when it took a 1-0 lead midway through the first period courtesy of sophomore forward Ludwig Karlsson’s fifth goal of the season.
But it was the same song, different dance for Northeastern: The Huskies didn’t show up for the rest of the game – a recurring trend this season – and allowed the Saints (6-4-2) to come from behind and score five unanswered goals.
This time, it was a high-powered, physical forecheck and exploitation of the odd-man rush that led to a loss for Northeastern.
The Saints dominated the Huskies along the boards and in the corners, forcing turnovers and creating opportunities in the offensive zone while breaking up the Northeastern attack in their defensive end. Madigan and Co. couldn’t find a way to respond.
Once St. Lawrence seized possession of the puck in its own zone, the Huskies were victimized by quick counter-attacks. Three of the Saints’ five goals were created via the odd-man rush, two of which came in a 26-second span in the third period to give St. Lawrence a 5-1 lead.
“Our gameplan was to come out and try to compete, compete real hard for 60 minutes,” St. Lawrence head coach Greg Carvel said after the game. “In the second period, our gameplan was to come back out, get pucks deep, force their D into turnovers and really grind the game out.”
The blowout added to a long list of growing pains Northeastern has struggled with over the first third of its season.
Friday was the third time this season the Huskies were first on the scoreboard but came out on the losing end. It was also the seventh game where Northeastern conceded at least three goals and fifth time in the last seven games that it failed to score more than two.
“Last year at this time when we were starting to get on a roll we were burying some pucks,” Madigan said. “We’re not burying pucks [now], so that’s keeping all the games close and tight, and when you don’t execute defensively now you find yourself behind one, two goals and it’s been hard for us to climb out because we’re not scoring.”
In conference play, the Huskies have plummeted into a tie for eighth place in the Hockey East standings with a measly five points. They stand at 0-6-1 in their last seven conference games. Their only two Hockey East wins came their first two games of the season Oct. 13 and 20 against Merrimack College and Boston College. And they’ve earned only two wins in the last six weeks, both coming against the University of Alabama-Huntsville – the team ranked second-to-last in the Division I Ratings Percentage Index (RPI).
These are certainly not ideal conditions for a team with as much potential as Northeastern, and Madigan said now is the time when his team needs to determine its fate for the rest of the season.
“We have to take stock in that locker room and which way we want to go,” Madigan said. “We can continue feeling sorry for ourselves and have a little pity party, or we can decide we want to be like men and answer the bell. Each and every one of those guys is challenged in that [locker] room tonight to see how they want to respond. You can go one or two ways: You can keep feeling sorry for yourselves or you can just dig out and work harder, smarter, execute.”
The Huskies need to get on the winning track soon to salvage their season. This weekend they face an impressive University of Massachusetts-Amherst team (4-5-2, 3-5-1 Hockey East) – the Minutemen displayed their potential in one-goal losses to No. 1 Boston College and No. 9 Boston University, and wins over No. 2 University of New Hampshire and Providence College – in a home-and-home series beginning Friday.
Northeastern then has two Hockey East games – against the University of Massachusetts-Lowell and the University of Maine, the conference’s other two cellar-dwelling teams – sandwiched around non-conference games against No. 19 Harvard University and Bentley University before its Hockey East schedule heats up in mid-January.
If the Huskies can’t take care of business in those games, they could find themselves on the outside of the playoffs looking in come March.
“We need to compete harder, there’s no doubt. There’s a lot of things we need to do right now,” Madigan said. He later continued, “Each and every [player] needs to look deep inside themselves, say, ‘What more can I do for the team? What more can I do for myself to make this a better situation for our team moving forward?’…We’re at the point where everyone needs to take stock in their game and we need to focus on what we need to do as an individual, as a team to get better.”
