By Jared Shafran, News Staff

Going into the final weekend of Hockey East regular season play, the Huskies stood where they had been the entire season:’ first place.’ ‘ ‘
They could only hope that after two games against the defending national champion Boston College Eagles, that they would be able to hold their lead and stay on top.
In the first game, at Matthews Arena Friday night, the Huskies pulled off a thrilling come-from-behind 2-1 victory in overtime on a goal by freshman forward Steve Quailer 3:55 into the extra frame.
‘I thought as the game went on we got better but it still didn’t look good because [BC goalie John] Muse made some terrific saves there,” head coach Greg Cronin said. ‘We dodged a bullet.’
BC got on the board first, seven minutes into the game on team captain Brock Bradford’s 22nd goal of the season.
Northeastern did not have many chances to score in the first period and entered the locker room down 1-0.
‘I think the first period they dominated us,’ Cronin said. ‘It was a joke and they outplayed us so badly we were lucky it was only 1-0. But after that I thought the second period was fairly even and I thought the third period we played better.’
However, the Huskies’ defensive presence was noticeable throughout. The team blocked 10 shots in the first period alone and finished the game with a total of 20 blocks.
In the second period, Northeastern had more chances as they outshot the Eagles, 11-7. But they could not translate any of the opportunities into goals, going 0-for-2 on the power play and finishing the period still down a goal.
For most of the third period it was much of the same for NU, as they were unable to convert on chances they created.
With 1:08 left to go in the game, the Huskies pulled junior goaltender Brad Thiessen for an extra attacker to try and get the equalizing goal. That extra attacker was junior forward Randy Guzior.
Guzior came into the game with only two goals on the season and having been plagued by injury for a better part of the year.
With less than a minute left, senior forward Ryan Ginand took the puck all the way from his own end up the ice and moved into the attacking zone. He left the puck to his right for Guzior who was stationed in the slot on the outside edge of the circle. Guzior ripped a one-timer past’ Muse and into the top right corner of the net to tie the game at 1 with 25.8 seconds left.
As the game went into overtime, the Huskies had a new found momentum and did not waste their latest opportunity.
Sophomore forward Wade MacLeod had the puck deep behind the BC goal with less than two minutes to play in overtime when he moved a pass out to senior captainand forward’ Joe Vitale. Vitale quickly left it off to Quailer who found some room and lifted the puck over Muse and into the top of the net for the win.
‘I gotta give all the credit to Joey and Wade,’ Quailer said. ‘They got it to the net, started crashing and it just popped out to me, so luckily I got a lot of the net to shoot at and just put it in.’
On March 6, Vitale was selected as a part of the East Squad in the Frozen Four Skills Challenge. The event takes place April 10th at the Verizon Center in Washington, DC.’
The following night, the Huskies’ outcome was not as favorable as they took a 4-1 loss at Conte Forum.
NU got on the board first with a power play goal by junior defenseman David Strathman.
The lead didn’t last for long as BC retaliated four minutes later with a power play goal of their own from forward Cam Atkinson.
The second period saw the game get out of reach for the Huskies as BC scored three goals in the period to give themselves a 4-1 lead.
Northeastern was never able to recover despite numerous chances on the power play in both the second and third periods. They finished the game at 1-for-10 with the man advantage, while the Eagles converted on 3-of-6 power play opportunities.
‘All the credit goes to them,’ Cronin said. ‘They played a desperate game and they played a playoff type of game. I thought Muse was terrific and special teams decided the game.’
With Boston University sweeping Providence over the weekend, the Huskies finished the Hockey East season in second place with an 18-6-3 record (23-9-4 overall) and will go into the conference quarterfinals this weekend as the No. 2 seed. Their first opponent will be the UMass Minutemen, who finished at seventh in the conference.
The quarterfinals are a best’ of three series that will be played at Matthews Arena Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Friday’s game will be at 7 p.m., Saturday’s is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. and if necessary the final game is Sunday at 7 p.m.