By Jill Saftel, News Staff
The men’s hockey team’s season came to an end this weekend with two losses at the hands of the Boston University Terriers. The team finished in tenth (last) place in the Hockey East conference and will not advance to the playoffs for the second season in a row.
Unfortunately for Northeastern’s five seniors dressed for their final game at Matthews on Friday – Steve Morra, Vinny Saponari, Robbie Vrolyk, Drew Ellement and Chris Rawlings – the Huskies couldn’t come away with a win in front of the home crowd.
“The end to a tough season, and one that has a lot of disappointment from the way we started and the way we envisioned the season to be,” head coach Jim Madigan said. “It sounds like a broken record, but tonight, not unlike any of the last 10 games where we’ve been short-handed and short-staffed, I thought our kids competed hard and well. I liked the fact that we were only down 1-0 after.”
Despite goals from junior forward Cody Ferriero and sophomore forward Adam Reid, the Terriers’ four goals were more than the Huskies could overcome, and Northeastern fell 4-2, despite 33 saves from Rawlings.
The bad luck continued for Northeastern on Saturday as they traveled to Agganis Arena for their final puck drop of the 2012-13 season. Freshman defenseman Dustin Darou was ejected from the game in the first period for a hit on BU’s senior captain Wade Megan.
The Terriers capitalized on the man advantage, and as a result of some stick work from sophomore forward Evan Rodrigues, freshman forward Danny O’Regan took a feed from his linemate and beat Rawlings for the 1-0 jump at 7:01 in the first period.
To make matters worse for Northeastern, the Husky offense struggled to get going throughout the first period, registering just two shots on goal in the game’s first twenty minutes. The first didn’t come until 18:05 in the period, at which point BU had 10 shots on net. As the first period closed out, shots were 11-2 in the Terriers’ favor.
The 1-0 BU lead held throughout the second period, as neither team was able to score. But that changed just as the final twenty minutes began, and Rodrigues got one of his own past Rawlings 1:12 into the third period for the 2-0 BU lead.
That lead increased to three goals when junior forward Matt Nieto beat Rawlings five-hole at 12:52 in the third period. Seconds later it became a 4-0 lead as junior forward Sahir Gill scored on the power play at 13:30 with sophomore defenseman Dax Lauwers off on a tripping call for Northeastern.
Gill made it two in a row when he made it 5-0 for BU with 2:56 to play in regulation. The 5-0 score would hold throughout the final minutes, and the Terriers walked away with a senior night victory.
