By Jill Saftel, News Staff
Anyone who follows Northeastern hockey could tell you, watching the team through a season is a series of exhilarating highs and devastating lows. After a disappointing first half with a 5-9-1 record overall, 3-8-1 in Hockey East, expectations certainly weren’t high for their first game back on the road against Beanpot contender Harvard College, but the Huskies showed what can happen when talented players skate as a team with chemistry.
Junior Cody Ferriero scored four goals to match his four penalties and freshman Kevin Roy notched five points in the 5-1 road win to launch a promising start to the second half of the season. But that promise didn’t make it back from Cambridge to Matthews Arena on Saturday night when the Huskies faced another non-conference opponent in Bentley University, an Atlantic Hockey team with a 6-9-1 overall record. Despite taking an early lead just over three minutes into play with a goal from Ferriero, Northeastern fell flat against the Falcons, taking a 6-3 loss.
The problem for the Huskies is inconsistency, according to head coach Jim Madigan. He said he wanted to build on the win at Harvard, but poorly executed play plagued the team.
“It’s effort at times, it’s inconsistency and lack of execution at times,” Madigan said.
While the team couldn’t carry over its success from the Harvard game, it certainly wasn’t from lack of excitement for their next matchup.
“We were pretty excited. Coming back from break, everyone got a nice break away from hockey and school so we were excited to get back at it and won versus Harvard,” captain Vinny Saponari said. “We were really excited to play against Bentley but we just couldn’t put in a team effort for a full 60 minutes and it cost us.”
Despite that excitement and the early lead, the Huskies found themselves quickly down by two goals just after tying the score at 3-3 thanks to Ferriero’s second of the night and a goal from assistant captain Robbie Vrolyk.
“For one, it’s disappointing,” Madigan said of Bentley coming back after Vrolyk’s tying goal. “We came back, we played the way we wanted to play in the third period and responded well and then we just gave up easy goals. We’ve talked about if we’re going to be successful moving forward, we’ve got to take care of our own zone and we didn’t do it tonight, plain and simple.”
Fortunately for the Huskies, the 6-3 Bentley loss had no conference implications, and all the focus has been placed on Friday’s matchup against the University of Maine. Madigan said Northeastern’s defense failed against Bentley in terms of coverage in and around the net, so the team’s focus in practice this week has been placed on play behind the blue line.
“Focus has been on the D-zone – it’s been our Achilles heel this year,” Saponari said. “When we’re good in our own D-zone, we’re good everywhere. That’s something we’ve got to keep getting good at.”
Down a few players, Madigan said he’s hoping to have either sophomore Ludwig Karlsson or freshman Dustin Darou back on the ice this weekend, but that both are week-to-week. Karlsson was injured during practice the Wednesday before the Bentley game and Darou was injured at Harvard.
And as for the inconsistency, the team’s captain is placing responsibility on himself and his teammates when it comes to staying calm, whether they’ve just tied it up or gone down by two goals.
“We’ve had trouble playing a full 60 [minutes], we have ups and downs during games and we just have to get better at managing them, me personally and everyone on the team,” Saponari said. “If you make a mistake you’ve got to get over it fast, you have to manage your emotions.”
The Huskies return to the Matthews Arena ice tomorrow for their first Hockey East game of 2013 against Maine (7-9-1 overall, 5-5-1 HEA) at 7 p.m.
