Brett Motherwell lay battered and dazed on the Matthews Arena ice Saturday night.
The BC freshman was the victim of a vicious, perfectly-timed hit by Northeastern freshman forward Joe Vitale early in the second period of the Eagles’ 1-1 tie against the Huskies.
For 5 to 10 seconds Motherwell stayed in the same spot, trying to reorient himself.
Based on the new atmosphere at Matthews Arena, you couldn’t blame him if he or the rest of the BC bench had some trouble.
Surrounding him were 5,402 screaming fans, just the second crowd over 5,000 since the arena’s renovation in 1995. Some stood in aisles, some along the upper balcony railings and all were ready for the next chance to participate in a raucous chant.
Behind him on the Husky bench were coach Greg Cronin and the new-look Northeastern men’s hockey team, pausing for a brief break from its fierce play on the ice. Minute after minute, the teams exchanged blows as the Huskies seemed furnished with a hard, angry edge to their play, while holding even with No. 8 BC through the overtime period.
“That’s the game [Cronin] loves,” Husky sophomore forward Carter Lee said after only his third game under the coach. “I think the kids that don’t play like that are going to start to real quick. He likes that kind of game, the grit and the hustle and I think everybody on this team’s prepared to do that.”
The penalty summary, in fact, grew steadily by the midway point of the second period. The teams seemed to cover the entire rulebook in 35 combined penalties, including nine unsportsmanlike conduct calls, six 10-minute misconduct calls, two hitting after the whistle calls and just for good measure, one hitting from behind.
The new man in charge, Cronin, didn’t seem fazed by a drastic change in play from the Huskies of old.
Part of his hesitancy to commend his team’s physical play may have come from hard-nosed assistant coach Brendan Walsh, who helped institute boxing as an off-season training regimen and a former player who made trips to the penalty box a routine on the ice.
“I couldn’t see much of [the hitting ] because the guys kept jumping up,” Cronin said. “It’s funny, [Walsh] said this, ‘Physical play in pro hockey is a fight. That to me is just like schoolyard playing.’ They’ve got helmets and masks on, so I actually think it was kind of comical.”
Fittingly enough, the man who scored the Huskies’ lone goal to allow NU to escape with a point from one of the country’s best was junior defenseman Brian Deeth. Among other penalties, Deeth was involved in one of a handful of scuffles between members of both teams, including a hit after the whistle call seven minutes into the second period.
His game-tying goal came at the 4:10 mark of the second. After freshman forward Ryan Ginand forced the puck away from a BC defender, Ginand hit Lee behind the net. Lee set up a storming Deeth in front of Eagle goalie Cory Schneider, and after a few rebound tries, the puck trickled in.
“I actually kind of caught the defense looking,” Deeth said of the goal. “[The defenseman] was standing there. I snuck in, Carter passed it and I kept banging away and by luck of the draw, it went right through [Schneider’s] legs.”
Cronin spoke at length about Ginand, 5-foot, 9-inch 165-pound freshman from Milford who most recently played for the Boston Jr. Bruins.
“He’s got a built-in second effort to his game,” Cronin said. “You can’t teach that to a lot of kids. You hit them over the head every day in practice and then 7 o’clock shows up on Friday and sometimes they still revert back to what they are. That kid’s just got an internal motor. He’s an inspiring player to watch.”
Deeth’s goal saved NU from the agony and frustration of the Eagles’ power-play goal, which came quickly in the first period and did its part to quiet down the Matthews crowd, which roared most of the night.
On a shorthanded Husky rush, BC’s Joe Rooney intercepted a pass and beat out the NU defense to Husky goalie Adam Geragosian, passing the puck from the left circle directly to a wide open Dan Bertram, who fired a shot past Geragosian.
“I thought the game was a real battle,” said BC coach Jerry York, the winningest active coach in college hockey. “We got the first goal, they answered us. I thought it was a gritty, hard-nosed, grind-it-out type of game. Both teams had good chances.”
In the OT period, the teams took turns with shots just inches away from being goals. NU captain Chuck Tomes, on the first shift of the extra frame, connected on a wrist shot that bounced barely off the right post.
Eagle senior defenseman Peter Harrold then almost silenced the crowd with 15 seconds left, but his wrist shot clanged harmlessly off the post.
Geragosian stopped 29 on the night, while Schneider saved 23.
“The goaltenders kept it at 1-1,” York said. “We anticipated a Hockey East battle and we knew it was going to be a very hotly contested game. It’s hard to win many games with one goal and it’s hard to lose many games giving up one goal too.”
Cronin said Geragosian was a game-changing player and described one save in particular.
“Somebody came in and he made a glove save and it was so critical,” Cronin said. “It unlocks that vault where the momentum switches in the other direction if he doesn’t stop it. If you get goaltending like that, you can stay in every game. That’s the bottom line.”
