By Jill Saftel, News Staff
In their first game back at Matthews Arena since the holiday break, the Huskies came out strong against Atlantic Hockey opponent Bentley, but an early lead wouldn’t prove to be enough for a win. While they sit sixth in their conference, the Bentley Falcons boast the NCAA’s third leading scorer in Brett Gensler. The Huskies put the pressure on early, creating offensive opportunities which paid off early as Cody Ferriero buried a rebound just over three minutes in.
Bentley responded with offensive chances of their own, a pass from Alex Kubiak to Joe Campanelli across the crease looked like a sure shot, but went just wide before Campanelli could get his stick on it. Bentley eventually capitalized on those chances when Alex Grieve took a feed from Gensler and shot it over Rawlings’ shoulder to the back of the net at 13:52 to tie it up, 1-1. It looked like the Falcons would take the lead with nine minutes left in the first when Jared Rickord took a slapshot, but it went just wide.
Ben Oskroba had a clear shot when a rebound landed just in front of him near the crease, but he was unable to jam it in before the puck was cleared.
After great back and forth play with good chances on both ends, the second period looked like a game between two different teams with little of the offensive action seen in the first. Northeastern’s Mike Gunn got a good look during a power play opportunity after Brett Hartung went off on a boarding call with 5:43 left in the second, but Komm easily made the save.
An otherwise uneventful period turned sour for the Huskies when Gensler made a beauty of a pass to Hartung who beat Chris Rawlings to put the Falcons up 2-1 at 14:42 in the second. Things only got worse when Justin Breton showed off some moves with a deke to get past the Northeastern defense, making it 3-1 with 54 seconds left in the second period.
It seemed like Northeastern could be counted out after such a sluggish second period, but Ferriero lit the lamp just 53 seconds into the third to prove the Huskies were still in it and cut the deficit to one goal. They continued to cut Bentley’s lead with another goal from Robbie Vrolyk, his fifth of the year, assisted by Mike McMurtry and Adam Reid at 5:13 in the third. With the score tied at 3-3, there were just under 15 minutes of hockey left to determine a winner.
It only took two of those 15 minutes for Bentley to get back on top with a goal from Derek Bacon with 12:33 to play to make it 4-3. The Falcons increased their lead with just over nine minutes to play as Hartung got his second of the night, increasing his team’s lead to 5-3. Rawlings was pulled with 2:40 to play and an empty netter from Zach Marginsky sealed it at 6-3.
“Obviously disappointed with the outcome of the game and the final score,” head coach Jim Madigan said. “We just didn’t build on the game that we played against Harvard. We were lackluster and inconsistent with our effort, inconsistent with our approach to systems and how we wanted to play.”
Northeastern saw some interesting line changes due to injury tonight, with Ludwig Karlsson and Dustin Darou both sidelined. Fourth-liner Steve Morra moved up to left wing on the first line with Garrett Vermeersch and Vinny Saponari while defenseman Ben Oskroba was listed in Morra’s place on the fourth line. Kevin Roy ended up pulling some double duty as left winger on the first line and on the second alongside Braden Pimm and Cody Ferriero.
While getting the win is obviously always the goal, Saturday night’s game had no Hockey East implications for Northeastern. That won’t be the case next weekend when Maine pays a visit to Matthews with valuable conference points on the line. With a 3-8-1 conference record and tied for ninth with UMass.-Lowell, Northeastern needs to start climbing the Hockey East ladder as quickly as possible.
